Wednesday, May 18, 2011

Impact on the community

The Black Death impacted both cities that were mildly hit and towns that were heavily hit with it. Some cities were totally wiped out from the plague and were without any signs of life. Often times, doctors were infected because of being in contact with the infected. This same thing happened to the priests because they too were in contact with the sick. Without the priests, the community had no religion. All of the deaths caused the community to be torn apart and separate themselves from each other in order to prevent the disease from spreading even more.
     This was a depressing time for the people and made them not want to be near other people in fear of getting the disease. I can't imagine not being around people just because I was afraid of getting a disease.

The spreading of the Black Death

     Like I said before, the Black Death was spread into Europe in 1346. Mongol attackers from the north carried the disease into the European towns they were attacking. Their goal was to spread the disease into these towns to make it easier to conquer. Another way they would do this is by catapulting dead bodies that had been infected into the cities. These people would try to dump the bodies into the ocean but they eventually got the disease anyway.
     The Black Death was spread mostly by air which is really hard to stop because you have to breath to live and if you breathe, there is a possibility if you getting the Black Death. Another way it was spread is by water. This happened because the people would dump the contaminated bodies into the rivers and oceans which people used all the time. So, people's decisions also caused the plague to spread.

Tuesday, May 17, 2011

The beginning of an epidemic


This is a common scene during the
Black Death
 The Black Death came from the sea brought by infected sailors coming to England from the areas of Central Asia or Egypt. But it wasn’t just the sailors that infected the Europeans. Rats from the ships scurried out into the streets, infected other rats and animals which eventually infected humans. Within days the unknown disease caused many people to become ill. Physicians had never seen anything like this before so no one knew what to do about it. Only a few nobles died from the plague but almost every commoner lost someone they were close to or even died them. Many lives were lost because of this.

             The disease attacked and killed innocent people and there was nothing anyone could do about it but hope and pray that they would survive.The disease attacked the young and the strong in particular. Actually, some towns were completely wiped out from the plague. This caused panic among the community and made people want to flee the area. The Black Death was one of the major events that occured in medieval Europe and people still are learning more about it every day.

Deadly symptoms


This is what a medieval doctor
might have looked like.

There were many terrible symptoms of the Black Death. Some of the early symptoms of the Black Death were headache and redness of the eyes. People might have just thought it was just a mild sickness at first. But then came severely painful stomach cramps, vomiting, and diarrhea. Red spots also covered the body as someone’s fever increased. Now the people must have known something was wrong. Another common but terrible symptom was egg sized bumps particularly where the body bent. This included places such as the elbows, arm pits, and behind the legs. These spots worsened as the sickness got stronger. Later symptoms were things such as delirium. This is whenever you go insane and you can’t think rationally.
People suffered greatly with these horrible symptoms and usually died after 7 to 9 days after the first symptoms appeared. This would have been a horrible way to die because it was long and painful. I can't imagine how hard it would have been to see so many people die from something that no one could do anything about.