The Black Death of 1348 to 1350 ******************************* Bristol was an important European trade port during the Medieval era and it is believed that the plague first arrived there, via ships and sailors, sometime between June and August in 1348; the plague quickly spread from Bristol and reached London by the 1st November 1348; at that time London was a crowded, bustling city with a population of around 70,000; the sanitation was poor and living conditions were filthy; the continuing influx of ships, and its infected sailors and flea ridden rodents, arriving in Bristol and other British ports, including up the River Thames helped spread the plague to the rest of England. The Black Death was to kill 1.5 million people out of an estimated total of 4 million people between 1348 and 1350. No medical knowledge existed in Medieval England to cope with the disease. After 1350, it was to strike England another six times by the end of the century. Understandably, peasants were terrified at the news that the Black Death might be approaching their village or town. The crowded, dirty living conditions of the English cities, towns and villages led to the rapid spread of the disease; church records show that the actual deaths in London alone were around 20,000; between 1348 and 1350, the plague killed about 30 to 40 percent of the population of England, which at the time was estimated to be about five to six million; the oldest, youngest and poorest died first and due to the lack of places to bury the dead, many were thrown into open communal pits; during that time whole towns and villages in England simply ceased to exist; the plague in England ran its course and ended sometime in 1350. The Black Death Mortality Rate ****************************** The plague had a mortality rate of around 35 percent, started in Europe in 1328 and lasted until around 1351, although there were outbreaks in several areas for the next sixty years; it has been conclusively proven via analysis of ancient DNA from plague victims in northern and southern Europe that the pathogen responsible is the Yersinia pestis bacteria; it is thought to have originated in the Gobi Desert, in China, and travelled along the Silk Road until it reached the Crimea in 1346; the plague was spread by fleas that were carried by rats and other small rodents and it followed all the Trade Routes to every country. The plague wasn't fussy, it struck people from all walks of society, including royalty; King Edward III had arranged a marriage for his favourite daughter Joan Plantagenet; she was to marry King Pedro of Castille, the son of Alfonso XI and Maria of Portugal; the marriage was to take place in Castille; Joan left England with the blessing of her parents; at this time the Black Death had not yet taken hold in England; its first victims in France were in August 1348; Joan travelled through France and contracted the disease and died in Bayonne on the 2nd September 1348. Symptoms ******** The plague was known as the Black Death because one of the symptoms it produced was a blackening of the skin around the painful swellings, or buboes, of the lymph nodes that appeared in the armpits, legs, neck, or groin; the buboes were red at first, but later turned a dark purple, or black and when a victim's blood was let the blood that exuded was black, thick and vile smelling with a greenish scum mixed in it. Other symptoms of the Black Death included, a very high fever, mental disorientation, delirium, vomiting, muscular pains and bleeding in the lungs, the victim also had an intense desire to sleep, which, if yielded to, quickly proved fatal; victims only lived between 2 to 4 days after contracting the disease. It symptoms were described in 1348 by a man called Boccaccio who lived in Florence, Italy: "The first signs of the plague were lumps in the groin or armpits. After this, livid black spots appeared on the arms and thighs and other parts of the body. Few recovered. Almost all died within three days, usually without any fever." In towns and cities people lived very close together and they knew nothing about contagious diseases. Also the disposal of bodies was very crude and helped to spread the disease still further as those who handled the dead bodies did not protect themselves in any way. The filth that littered streets gave rats the perfect environment to breed and increase their number. It is commonly thought that it was the rats that caused the disease. This is not true, the fleas did this. However, it was the rats that enabled the disease to spread very quickly and the filth in the streets of our towns and cities did not help to stop the spread of the disease. Lack of medical knowledge meant that people tried anything to help them escape the disease. One of the more extreme was the flagellants. These people wanted to show their love of God by whipping themselves, hoping that God would forgive them their sins and that they would be spared the Black Death. The cure ******** During the Middle Ages, neither the physicians or the victims had any idea of what caused the disease; the most they could do was to administer various known concoctions of herbs to relieve the symptoms, there was no known cure; headaches were relieved by rose, lavender, sage and bay; sickness or nausea was treated with wormwood, mint, and balm; lung problems were treated with liquorice and comfrey. Vinegar was used as a cleansing agent as it was believed that it would kill disease, but bloodletting was commonly thought to be one of the best ways to treat the plague, that and lancing the buboes and applying a warm poultice of butter, onion and garlic; various other remedies were tried including arsenic, lily root and even dried toad. Many things were tried to prevent the spread of the plague and Pope Clement VI, living at Avignon, often sat between two large fires to breath in what he termed as pure air and seeing as the plague bacillus is actually destroyed by heat, this was one of the few truly effective measures taken. What stopped the Black Death? ***************************** There are several theories as to why the plague ended, one was that the black rats were the main carriers of the disease, the brown rat is a lot more aggressive and wherever they resided the black rats did not gain a foothold, therefore the disease did not spread there; but in the end I believe that the infected rats started to die, which reduced the food source of the bacterium; a built up immunity and basic hygiene, ended the disease, people started to wash their hands, avoid dirty water and burnt or buried their dead deep in the ground. The Consequences **************** The Black Death had a huge impact on society. Due to the high number of deaths and such a rapid drop in population, there was a reduced labour force in England, which resulted in a higher value being placed on labour Prices and Wages rose; this ultimately let to the Peasants Revolt in 1381. Fields went unploughed as the men who usually did this were victims of the disease. Harvests would not have been brought in as the manpower did not exist. Animals would have been lost as the people in a village would not have been around to tend them. Whole villages would have faced starvation. Towns and cities would have faced food shortages as the villages that surrounded them could not provide them with enough food. Those lords who lost their manpower to the disease turned to sheep farming as this required less people to work on the land. Grain farming became less popular – this, again, kept towns and cities short of such basics as bread. One consequence of the Black Death was inflation – the price of food went up creating more hardship for the poor. In some parts of England, food prices went up by four times. Due to the lack of labour farming land was given over to pasturing, which was much less labour intensive and consequently the wool industry boomed, which in turn led to a boost in the cloth and woollen industry and many peasants moved from the country to the towns looking for work; the Black Death was therefore also responsible for the decline of the Feudal system. The Black Death and Religion **************************** During the Middle Ages it was essential that people were given the last rites, so that they had the chance to confess their sins before they died; however, the spread of the deadly plague in England was swift and the death rate was almost 50% in isolated populations such as monasteries, which meant many of the clergy were killed by the plague. Due to this there were not enough clergy left to offer all of the victims the last rites or to give enough support and help to the victims; the situation was so bad that Pope Clement VI was eventually forced to grant remission of sins to all of those who died of the Black Death; victims were allowed to confess their sins to one another, 'even to a woman'. The peasants response ******************** Those who survived the Black Death believed that there was something special about them – almost as if God had protected them. Therefore, they took the opportunity offered by the disease to improve their lifestyle. Feudal law stated that peasants could only leave their village if they had their lord’s permission. Now many lords were short of desperately needed labour for the land that they owned. After the Black Death, lords actively encouraged peasants to leave the village where they lived to come to work for them. When peasants did this, the lord refused to return them to their original village. Peasants could demand higher wages as they knew that a lord was desperate to get in his harvest. So the government faced the prospect of peasants leaving their villages to find a better ‘deal’ from a lord thus upsetting the whole idea of the Feudal System which had been introduced to tie peasants to the land. Ironically, this movement by the peasants was encouraged by the lords who were meant to benefit from the Feudal System. To curb peasants roaming around the countryside looking for better pay, the government introduced the Statute of Labourers in 1351 that stated: No peasants could be paid more than the wages paid in 1346. No lord or master should offer more wages than paid in 1346. No peasants could leave the village they belonged to. Though some peasants decided to ignore the statute, many knew that disobedience would lead to serious punishment. This created great anger amongst the peasants which was to boil over in 1381 with the Peasants Revolt. Hence, it can be argued that the Black Death was to lead to the Peasants Revolt. The Black Death scientifically ****************************** The Black Deaths's real name is the Bubonic Plague, and along with the septicemic plague and the pneumonic plague, are the zoonotic diseases, that circulate mainly among small rodents and their fleas and the three types of infections caused by Yersinia pestis, formerly known as Pasteurella pestis, which belongs to the family Enterobacteriaceae; without treatment, the bubonic itself kills about two out of three infected humans within 4 days; it is generally believed to be the cause of the Black Death which swept through Europe in the 14th century and killed an estimated 25 million Europeans. The term bubonic plague is derived from the Greek word bubo, meaning 'swollen gland.'; swollen lymph nodes, buboes, occur in the armpit, legs, neck and groin in persons suffering from bubonic plague; Bubonic plague was often used synonymously for all plagues, but it does in fact refer specifically to an infection that enters through the skin and travels through the lymphatics, as is often seen in flea borne infections. The Black Death did not totally die out; it returned at various times, killing even more people, until it left Europe in the 19th century; the worst case of the Plague was between 1348 and 1350, but there was also an outbreak in London in 1665, known as the Great Plague, in which around a hundred thousand people died.