If you think Ebola is bad, you obviously haven’t heard about The Black Death. The Black Death, also known as the Bubonic Plague, was a fatal disease that spread from China in 1348 to the rest of Europe. During those years of the pestilence, between 25-50% of Europe’s population was killed. The Black Death was a very deadly disease that infected everybody it came in contact with and caused farmers to flee. Due to many failed attempts to cure the disease, the people of Europe shifted their focus from religion to medicine.…
In the summer of 1518, a woman named Frau Troffea randomly started dancing in the streets of France. She continued to dance not because of a good mood or music, but because it was uncontrollable. This dancing continued day and night for several days and became highly contagious to those surrounding her. Soon her neighbors and many others began to dance uncontrollably. Unfortunately, many of the people died from either a stroke or a heart attack due to the dancing. This occurrence later received the name, “The Dancing Plague of 1518”. This event drove some historians and even doctors to speculate the cause of this outbreak.…
Throughout the course of the plague, beginning in Italy in 1348, many people had different responses to how the plague was spread and who caused it. These different responses show how the people during the Middle Ages were ignorant to how disease spread and how it was instigated. Many people blamed God and Jews, others prayed, and finally others secluded themselves during the spread of the plague. Most responses proved to be ineffective for stopping the plague, while others were well thought out and logical reasons to escape the plague and its mortifying power.…
Norman F. Cantor, In the Wake of the Plague (New York: Harper Collins First Perennial edition, 2001) examines how the bubonic plague, or Black Death, affected Europe in the fourteenth century. Cantor recounts specific events in the time leading up to the plague, during the plague, and in the aftermath of the plague. He wrote the book to relate the experiences of victims and survivors and to illustrate the impact that the plague had on the government, families, religion, the social structure, and art.…
Describe what Federici takes to be the relationship between the black death (the plague), wages, and the witch hunts. What was the role of women in society before the black death? How did it change? What does Federici take to be the reasons for the witch hunts?…
An important topic is being discussed and it concerns the Black Death in England. “The Black Death is the name given to a deadly plague (often called bubonic plague, but is more likely to be pneumonic plague) which was rampant during the Fourteenth Century. It was believed to have arrived from Asia in late 1348 and caused more than one epidemic in that century – though its impact on English society from 1348 to 1350 was terrible. No amount of medical knowledge could help England when the plague struck. It also had a major impact on England’s social structure which lead to the Peasants Revolt of 1381.” (History Learning). “The first outbreak of the plague swept across England in 1348 to 1349. It seems to have travelled across the south in bubonic…
Thesis: In the middle of the fourteenth century in Europe, an airborne, highly contagious disease or plague struck, which killed about third of Europe. Due to severe illnesses across the continent, many people began to flee from Europe, especially the nobles and the clergymen. Fear of the plague predominately grew from uncertainty of the origin of the plague and how to cure it.…
During the renaissance time in London, cities did not have the sewage systems and cleanliness people have today. Disease and germs were floating in the people’s water and sitting on doors, tables, and chairs. Because of these things, the Bubonic Plague of London was started. But was hygiene the only reason the plague was started? And what is the Bubonic Plague? During the Renaissance time period, the Bubonic Plague killed many people in London, and this paper will state what caused it, the symptoms of the plague, and the treatments and results of it.…
Herlihy, David. 1997. The Black Death and the Transformation of the West. Cambridge, MA and…
The Civil War holds the record of being the deadliest war that the United States has ever been involved in. The Civil War’s death toll reached approximately 633,000 compared to the 521,000 lost in World War I and II combined1. Some of that was caused by the fact that medical techniques and care were not advancing as quickly as weapons were. Another major factor in the amount of casualties is disease which was typically caused by poor hygiene. It took a majority of the war before doctors realized what was causing the diseases and other deaths and what techniques could be used order to lessen the death toll.…
Giovanni Boccaccio was the writer of the book Decameron, in which he thoroughly describes the tragedies and horror the Black Death plague brought about. Black Death was a fatal sickness that was wide spread from the East to the West. The plague started in about the 1330s and continued into most of the 1400s; however there were instances still occurring in the 1600s until the end of the eighteenth century (Coffin 312). The plague was later said to have come from infected fleas that travel on the backs of rats. Once it is in your blood stream it is almost instant death within a matter of hours (Coffin 316). This disease was rapidly killing everyone, while there were speculations as to how one would contract the disease; neither doctors nor medical specialist knew (Brophy 323). There was no cure and quite frankly no one was safe. The public, experiencing the rise of Black Death during that time period, had a reason to worry and be frightened. This fear thus caused the reactions that Boccaccio speaks of in his book, Decameron.…
Over one million British people died every year during the Victorian Era to one of the many fatal diseases that you could have caught. This topic is about the diseases that many British people caught in the Victorian era. Some were fatal some were bearable. Some had cures as others didn’t. It was different back then because they did not have cures for things like the flu, now days we do. There were many of very bad diseases out there and many of them were deadly.…
In the 14th century Europe was a country torn by war, famine, and scandal in the church. Furthermore, malnutrition, poverty, disease, growing inflation and other economic crises made Europe ripe for a tragedy in the likes of the Bubonic Plague. The Bubonic Plague was one of the most devastating pandemics in human history. It ravaged Europe between 1347 and 1350 before it continued on to Russia, leaving 30-95 percent of the entire population dead. The Bubonic Plague killed indiscriminately. No one was spared. The young and the old, the rich and the poor. All social classes were affected, though the lower classes were most vulnerable because they lived in unhealthy conditions. It was worse among…
According to Krieger (2001:680), the term social epidemiology was developed in 1950. For quite a number of years throughout the history, every one including the scientists, philosophers and physicians wanted to find out the root cause of diseases within a population. There were a number of controversies that came with the concept that the initial cause of a disease in a population is caused by social factors. During the 17th century, physicians, scientist and philosophers made an attempt to understand and predict a disease of which ended up leading to fact in order to identify a disease they had to look at the disease symptoms, the patient’s outcome and outbreak patterns of `a disease (Miller, Warning, Beard & Knapp, 2012:17).…
Bumps, fever, and acute pain, these are the symptoms of the virus smallpox. So with this being said, maybe smallpox isn't as small as everyone says it is. Smallpox is a virus that was eradicated in the 1980’s because the virus could lead to death if not treated. During it’s prime, Smallpox was able to kill 3 out of 10 people who caught it. However, when milkmaids caught cowpox, the two viruses counterattacked each other and eventually Smallpox was no longer a threat. Even though there is no evidence of smallpox transmission in the world, it may still linger.…