Black Plague
The Bubonic Plague, which is also called the Black Death, has been around since the time of cave people. It was because of weak or injured animals being eaten. The animal had fleas, which carried the disease to the predator. The first recorded case of the Black plague was in China in BC 224. However the biggest outbreak was in Europe in the fourteenth century. Most likely the plague spread due to social conditions and increasing population of rodents that carried the disease from other parts of the world, but religious aspects and the exhaustion of the economy also led to the increased spread of the disease. The rodents infected the humans, who in turn infected other humans, and continued in a vicious cycle until 1351, when the people began to figure out how to control the disease. When the worst was over it had killed twenty-four million people or close to thirty-seven percent of Europe's entire population. Heinrich von Staden, Count of the Palantine, wrote The Land and Government of Muscovy. In it, he stated, "Whatever house the pestilence visited was immediately nailed up, and if a person died within, he had to be buried there. Many died of hunger in their own houses. Throughout the country, all the roads and highways we
Finally, Religious aspects had a role in the plague as well as social conditions and the economy. An eyewitness of the plague stated that the disease took its toll on the church by saying "Realizing what a deadly disaster had come to them, the people quickly drove the Italians from their city. But the disease remained, and soon death was everywhere. Fathers abandoned their sick sons. Lawyers refused to come and make out wills for the dying. Friars and nuns were left to care for the sick, and monasteries and convents were soon deserted, as they were stricken, too. Bodies were left in empty houses, and there was no one to give them a Christian burial." Many people thought that the plague was a vengeance from God. This is expressed perfectly by M. Bertrand, a physician at Marseilles in A Historical Relation of the Plague at Marsailles In the Year 1720, when he stated " The plague must be considered a particular chastisement exercised by an angry God over a sinful and offending people rather than as a calamity proceeding from common and natural causes. Consequently, it is little subject to the remedies pursued in the cases of ordinary maladies." Many people began to extend their beliefs past God and experiment with superstitions. H. de Rochas, a French physician explains this in The Reform of Medicine, by stating that "Plague-stricken patients hang around their necks toads, either dead or alive, whose venom should within a few days draw out the poison of the disease." All religious figures of the land were devoted to help their people. They wanted nothing more than to end this violent plague and cease all death. Father Dragoni, a priest, explains his devotion to his people in his letter to the Health Magistracy of Florence by stating "I have accompanied severity with compassion and charity. I have managed and fed the convalescents and servants of two pest houses;
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Approximate Word count = 1264
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)
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