The Black Death, 1348

The Black Death, 1348 was a worldwide pandemic, which started in the mid-14th century.

Pattern Of the Pandemic

Asian Outbreak

The outbreak of the plague was first reported in China in the early 1339s. Many provinces including Hubei, Jiangxi, Shanxi, Hunan, Guangdong, Guangxi, Henan and Suiyuan were affected by the disease. The Mongols and merchant caravans are likely to have indirectly brought the infected mouse from Asia to other parts of the world, when trading cites like Constantinople and Trebizond were infected. In that same year, the Genoese possession of Caffa, a great trade emporium on the Crimean peninsula, came under siege by an army of Mongol warriors, backed by Venetian forces. The Mongol Army made use of the corpses as a biological weapon, increasing the speed of the spread of the plague.

European Outbreak

The Black Death rapidly spread along the major European sea and land trade routes,
from Genoa and Venice. Trading ships from Genovese reached the port of Messina. By then, the sailors were already infected or dead.No one survived. The disease also spread from Italy across Europe. In a short period of time Germany, France, England, Spain, Portugal, Russia,Poland and Netherland were all infected.

Middle Eastern outbreak

A dramatic change in both economic and social structures occurred in the Middle East countries. It first entered from southern Russia in 1347, then reached
Alexandria in Egypt, probably through the port's trade with Constantinople and ports on the Black Sea. During 1348, it travelled east, to Gaza, and north along the eastern coast to cities in Lebanon, Syria and Palestine, including Asqalan, Acre, Jerusalem, Sidon, Damascus, Homs, and Aleppo. Most of the citizens died while escaping from the disease, but the infection had already been spread.
Mecca too became infected by 1349, records show that the city of Mawsil (Mosul) suffered a massive epidemic, and the city of Baghdad experienced a second round of it. In 1351 , Yemen experienced an outbreak of the plague. The party held for the return of King Mujahid of Yemen from imprissonment in Cairo may have brought the disease with them from Eqypt.


Recurrence

The plague repeatedly returned to haunt Europe and the Mediterranean, although the plague still exists with isolated cases today, the

Great Plague of London in 1665–1666 is recognized as one of the last major outbreaks. It killed off any remaining plague-bearing rats and fleas, reducing the plaque’s outbreak cases. According to the bubonic plague theory, one possible explanation for the disappearance of plague from Europe may be that the black rat infection reservoir and its disease vector was displaced and succeeded by the bigger Norwegian, or brown, rat, which is less prone to transmiting germ-bearing fleas to humans in large rat die-offs.

Causes



Bubonic and septicemia plague are transmitted by direct contact with fleas. The bacteria multiplies inside a flea make it really hungry. And in turn the fleabite on humans to fill its stomach, but unfortunately it does not get filled. While feeding on the human, the infected blood carrying the bacteria flows from the flea into the open wound, in the end the flea dies of starvation.
The pneumonic plague spreads itself differently between human, the plagues spreads through human saliva. The airborne bacteria have yet to have any official cure. And this is how it becomes contagious and people get the disease.


Signs and Symptoms


The plague brought signs and symptoms from those who were affected by it. Firstly there will be painful lymph node swellings, the buboes. They will appear in the groin area, the neck and armpits, which ooze pus, and blood. This symptom is call necrosis. Most victims died within 4-7 days after infection. Next the mortality rate increased from 30 to 75%. And this included fever of 38-41 degree celcius, headaches, aching joints, nausea and comitting. And also skin turned to shades of purple.


Alternative Explanations


There are doubts that the Black Death was an epidemic of bubonic plague.
As in Iceland there weren’t any rats, but two third of the population was killed.
A biological reappraisal also said that it was impossible for rats and fleas to spread the bubonic plague.

Consequences

Depopulation


Asia
Estimates of the demographic impact of the plague in Asia are based on both population figures during this time and estimates of the disease's toll on population centres. The initial outbreak of plague in the

Chinese province of Hubei in 1334 claimed up to ninety percent of the population, an estimated five million people. During 1353–54, outbreaks in eight distinct areas throughout the Mongol/Chinese empires may have caused the death of two-thirds of China's population, often yielding an estimate of twenty-five million deaths.

Europe and Middle East

It is estimated that between one-quarter and two-thirds of the European population died from the outbreak between 1348 and 1350. Many rural villages were depopulated, mostly the smaller communities, as the few survivors fled to larger towns and cities leaving behind

abandoned villages. The Black Death hit the culture of towns and cities disproportionately hard, although rural areas were also largely affected. Places such as Eastern Poland and Lithuania, had so low populations and were so isolated that the plague made little progress. Parts of Hungary and, in modern Belgium, the Brabant region, Hainaut and Limbourg, as well as Santiago de Compostella, were unaffected for unknown reasons. Other areas, which escaped the plague, were isolated mountainous regions (e.g. the Pyrenees). Larger cities were the worst off, as population densities and close living quarters made disease transmission easier. Cities were also strikingly filthy, infested with lice, fleas and rats, and subject to diseases related to malnutrition and poor hygiene. The influx of new citizens facilitated the movement of the plague between communities, and contributed to the longevity of the plague within larger communities.
All social classes were affected, as they live together in unhealthy places.

Alfonso XI of Castile was the only royal victim of the plague, but other royals lost their loved ones in the plague.
Furthermore, there were resurgences of the plague in later years. The plague was not eradicated until the 19th century. Many surviving rural people fled, leaving their fields and crops, and entire rural provinces are recorded as being totally depopulated. Surviving records in some cities reveal a devastating number of deaths.

Religion

People became pessimistic towards religious officials who could not keep their promises of curing the plague-infected victims and stopping the spread of the disease. The reasons for the outbreak could not be accurately determined by anyone and neither could a cure be found. Extreme isolation resulted in the increase support for different religious groups or an increased interest in the finding of more alternatives to problems faced by Europeans.

Other Effects

The European culture became very morbid where people became more pessimistic.
Europeans realized that some potions and cures used by alchemists worsened the condition of the patients and so the practice decreased. Europeans drank more liquor instead of applying it as a remedy like they previously did. Studies conducted by Dr Thomas van Hoof of Utrecht University concluded that the Black Death also contributed to the Little Ice Age. Millions of trees suddenly sprang upon abandoned farmland, soaking up the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, which caused the planet to cool down.

The Black Death is also responsible for the high frequency of a particular genetic defect in people of European descent.