The Black Plague: Cause, Doctors, and Consequences

  

The Black Death was a plague pandemic that laid waste to medieval Europe from 1346 to 1356 CE and was estimated to have killed 25 to 30 million people. The disease was known as the Black Plague because it would turn skin and sores into a disturbing black, among other symptoms. With up to two-thirds of the people who suffered from the disease dying, approximately 30% to 50% of the population in places affected by the Black Death lost their lives due to the disease. The Black Death was the worst plague in human history, causing death tolls so high that it would take the population of Europe 200 years to recover to the numbers seen before the pandemic. 

The disease originated in central Asia and was then taken to Crimea, a peninsula on the northern coast of the Black Sea, by Mongol warriors and traders. The plague entered Europe through Italy after rats on Genoese trading ships sailing from the Black Sea brought the disease over. The cause of the Black Death was the bacillus bacteria Yersinia pestis carried by fleas on rodents. Evidence shows that the Black Death first had to be transmitted by direct human contact with rodents carrying the disease and then spread through human fleas and head lice. 

There were three types of plagues, all of which were likely present in the pandemic, the Bubonic plague, the Pneumonic plague, and the Septicemic plague. The Bubonic plague was the most common of the three during the 14th century CE outbreak. It caused swelling in the groin and armpits, which later turned black. If left untreated, the Bubonic plague is fatal for 30% to 75% of infections, often within 72 hours. The other two types of diseases are typically deadly in all cases. 

Since doctors during the Black Death didn’t understand the cause of the disease, let alone how to stop it, they came up with different ‘remedies’ that were thought to be able to cure the plague. These doctors usually weren’t trained with their medical knowledge being very basic and often ineffective. Some of the ‘remedies’ practiced were cutting open the buboes to remove the ‘bad blood’ inside them, ‘bleeding’ the patient by placing leeches on their vital veins, and even getting people to breathe in fumes of human waste. These treatments didn’t work and, in some cases, only made matters worse getting the doctor infected. These doctors were called ‘witch’ doctors and were hired by towns and cities to stop the spread of the plague. They stuffed the beak of their uniform with herbs and fragrant flowers to avoid breathing in the disease and carried around a wooden stick to ward off people trying to come in contact with them. 

The Black Death had significant consequences on Medieval European society, some of which were the entire abandonment of many towns and villages, a shortage of farmers that led to demands that serfdom end, an intensification of Christian religious beliefs and practices, and extremist cults that challenged the authority of the clergy. The heightened religiosity combined with the death of many clerics, fears of sending students on long, dangerous trips, and the chance appearance of rich legacies inspired the founding of new universities and colleges at older ones. 

Another significant consequence of the Black Death was the Christian pogroms against Europe’s Jews. After Jewish people were accused of poisoning the wells and causing the Black Death, a wave of pogroms took place. In January 1349, the entire Jewish community of Basel was burned at the stake. In Cologne, Jews were forced to flee, and the Jewish communities of Freiburg, Augsburg, Nurnberg, Munich, Konigsberg, Regensburg, and other centers, were either exiled or burned. In Mainz, a city that once had the largest Jewish community in Europe, Jewish people had to defend themselves against a Christian mob, killing over 200 Christian. The Christians later retaliated and killed six thousand Jews in one day, on August 24, 1349. None of the 3,000 Jews in Erfurt survived the attack of Christian mobs and, by 1351, there were almost no Jews left in Germany or the Low Countries. While Jewish people eventually moved back to Western Europe, it would never again be the center of Jewish life as it had been for almost four centuries.

Sources: worldhistory.org, origins.osu.edu, history.com, blackdeathbyanouk.weebly.com, jewishhistory.org