The Black Death During The Elizabethan Era

Brian Toh
Mr. Smith
English 2 Honors
13 October 2014

Shrew Search

1. Black Death
Summary: The Black Death, or the Bubonic Plague, surfaced in Europe in the 1300s and persisted into the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries during the Elizabethan era when Shakespeare lived. The plague was the most devastating disease in that era, killing more than 20 million people, or almost one-third of Europe’s population. It was brought to Europe through trading ships, specifically 12 Genoese trading ships that docked at the Sicilian port of Messina on October 1347. Symptoms of the disease include buboes, or swollen lymph nodes that are sensitive and warm, which may form when fleas with the virus infect victims through biting. Buboes may be found in
The plague was often spread by fleas that lived on rodents and animals, especially from rats. The rats or fleas could be hiding in clothing or luggage of traveling people, causing them to introduce the disease to new areas. This method of disease introduction was referred to as “spread by leaps” or “metastatic spread.” The people who lived in the era of the Black Death were incredibly afraid of the disease, as dead bodies were piled into carts and the living victims were locked in their homes to contribute to the effort to limit the spread of the disease. Victims who recovered from the Black Death had to retrieve a ‘Certificate of Health’ to leave their homes and return to their ordinary lives. One outbreak of the disease in 1563 claimed 80,000 people in Elizabethan England. However, because the cause of the Black Death was unknown in the Elizabethan era, people did
Because many families allowed their own pigs to roam and graze outside the city walls and the city streets, the disease thrived in the filthy conditions of Medieval Europe. While studying the contagions of the disease, modern scientists have discovered that the disease was spread by a bacterium called Yersina pestis. They have also found that the bacteria is transmitted through the air, as well as from fleas and rats. The disease was especially prevalent because these vermin could be located practically everywhere in medieval Europe. They were most notably found aboard ships, which was how they spread to so many European port cities so quickly. After infecting the port city of Messina, the disease continued to spread to the ports of Marseilles in France and Tunis in North Africa. From these cities, the Black Death was spread to Rome and Florence, and by mid-1348, Paris, Bordeaux, Lyon, Rouen, and London were infected. Essentially, the Black Death eventually began to diminish in 1353, but fluctuated and resurfaced occasionally every few generations for centuries. Although the modern world has drastically improved in its hygienic enforcement, sanitation and health