The Bubonic Plague

The Bubonic plague was a disease that first rose to light in the early 14th century.  It was brought to Europe from Asia by merchants and soldiers that were trading goods with far eastern countries.  The disease would first arrive at sea ports and would quickly spread to the communities that lived in the cities and towns.

The disease is more commonly known as the Black Death. This name was given to it in 1833. It refers to the fact that the person who was infected would eventually turn black and die.  It also refers to the fact the people were having such a bad time with the diseases. The poor people that suffered it had no chance of survival as the doctors of the time did not have a clue how to cure it. Of course we now understand that a simple course of antibiotics would sort the problem out, but back then they did not have that choice. 

The Roman Catholic Church suffered a great deal, because as people began to believe that god would not save them, so lots of them started to live for the moment and forget going to church. The Jews also suffered a great deal as they were wrongly accused of putting poison in the drinking wells and many thousands of them were killed for no good reason.

It would be fare to say the people bringing the disease were not transmitting it to other people it was transferred from the black rat population that came on board the ships. The bubonic plague was caused by bacteria called yersinia pestis which was found in the gut of the fleas that were affected by it. 

The fleas fed on the blood of the black rats that were carrying the infectious disease; those same fleas would bite humans and inject the bacteria into that person’s blood stream.  Because there was no control over the rat population or indeed no awareness that rats could have been the route cause of the problem nothing was done to resolve the problem.  The number of people that were killed by the disease is said to been around the 75 million mark, the disease continued killing people to around the 17th century although there is not major evidence to suggest the final reason why the disease stopped killing it is widely suspected that the black rat population was killed off by the larger brown rat breed.  The brown rat is thought to not carry or be infected by the bubonic plague therefore the disease died out.