Essay On The Causes Of The Plague Dbq

The plague infected Europe with outbreaks beginning in the mid-fourteenth century and was met with many different reactions. These reactions included fear, curiosity, and even spite. Through these responses and general insecurity from the plague, superstitions and other theories formed so people could try to make sense of what was going on. Fear of the plague would be an understandable reaction, considering that they had no idea what was going on or how to cure it. Eventually believing that the plague was airborne, people's horrors of the plague could be seen through Heinrich von Staden, a traveler to Russia, in "Whatever house the pestilence visited was immediately nailed up, and if a person died within, he had to be buried there. Many died in their own houses. Throughout the country, all the roads and highways were guarded so that a person could not pass from one place to another" (Doc 5). Since he was a traveller, he had nothing to gain through this and was merely observing what he was seeing. People were so
One example of this is "The plague and sickness in England is due to the filth in the streets and the sputum and dogs' urine clogging the rushes on the floors of the houses" (Doc 2). It should be noted that during the plague outbreaks, most of Europe was unhygienic and they threw their waste onto the streets. Many precautions began to take place to prevent the spread of the disease, seen by "Gold, fire, the gallows: gold for the expense of pest houses to quarantine the diseased, the gallows to punish those who violate the health regulations and to frighten others, and bonfires to eliminate infected things" (Doc 6), written by Motto of Giovan Filippo. Being a physician, he had nothing to gain and through his words it's implied health regulations took place to prevent the spread of the plague and they set "infected" things on fire out of fear of it carrying