The Black Plague The Black Plague one of

The Black Plague

The Black Plague • one of the most devastating pandemics in human history • peaking in Europe between 1348 and 1350 • killing between 75 million and 200 million people.

The Spread of the Plague • probably started in China or central Asia • travelled along the Silk Road • carried by Oriental rat fleas living on the black rats that were regular passengers on merchant ships

Spread of the Plague

Major Cities in Europe

Death Toll • estimated to have killed 30 to 60 percent of Europe's population • reduced the world population from an estimated 450 million to a number between 350 and 375 million in the 14 th century.

Death Toll • • Middle East: Egypt: Paris: Florence: a third of its population 40% of its population 50% of population of 100, 000 110, 000 -120, 000 in 1338 to 50, 000 in 1351

Persecutions • renewed religious fervor and fanaticism • targets: Jews, friars, foreigners, beggars, pilgrims, lepers, etc. • lepers, and other individuals with skin diseases such as acne or psoriasis, were singled out and exterminated throughout Europe

Economic Effects • • • agricultural production dropped towns shrank in size entire areas of cities abandoned ranks of clergy were depleted trade sharply reduced

“The Triumph of Death”

Giovanni Boccaccio “How many valiant men, how many fair ladies, breakfast with their kinfolk and the same night supped with their ancestors in the next world! The condition of the people was pitiable to behold. They sickened by the thousands daily, and died unattended and without help. Many died in the open street, others dying in their houses, made it known by the stench of their rotting bodies. Consecrated churchyards did not suffice for the burial of the vast multitude of bodies, which were heaped by the hundreds in vast trenches, like goods in a ships hold and covered with a little earth. ”

The Plague in England • First outbreak swept across England in 1348 -49 • travelled across the south in bubonic form during the summer months of 1348 • mutated into the even more frightening pneumonic form with the onset of winter Sometimes it came by road, passing from village to village, sometimes by river, as in the East Midlands, or by ship, from the Low Countries or from other infected areas.

First Arrival • First arrived in Bristol • Bristol was the second largest city in Britain • Population of 10, 000, tightly packed together in conditions that were not altogether sanitary. Filth running in open ditches in the streets, fly-blown meat and stinking fish, contaminated and adulterated ale, polluted well water, unspeakable privies, epidemic disease, - were experienced indiscriminately by all social classes.

The Plague in England • On average, between 30 -45% of the general populace died in the Black Death of 134850. • In some villages, 80% or 90% of the population died. This sickness befell people everywhere, but especially the middling and lower classes, rarely the great.

The Plague in England • 1350 was not the end of it. • It came back in 1361 -64, 1368, 1371, 1373 -75, 1390, 1405 and continued into the fifteenth century. • Death rates in the later epidemics were lower, but more prevalent among young children and adolescents. It generated such horror that children did not dare to visit their dying parents, nor parents their children, but fled for fear of contagion as if from leprosy or a serpent.