Pneumonic Plague: The Black Death

In the first seven chapters of The Great Mortality author John Kelly discussed the Black Death movement from Asia to Europe, with trade playing a vital role in the spread of the plague. Seven hundred years later, it is the greatest natural disaster in human history. “Worldwide the disease has killed an estimate 200 million people”. Kelly described that “in a century when nothing moved faster than the fastest horse; the Black Death had circumnavigated Europe in a little less than four years”. No other of plague has taken as many lives or caused as much suffering as the Black Death.
It has been documented that the Black Death began in Asia, in the Mongolia and Kirgizia region. The Mongols unified much of Eurasia in the thirteen century and facilitated the plague growth by three key factors; trade, travel and larger efficient communications. By
The Bubonic plague being the most common was transmitted by flea bites. It incubated for two to six days, then it produced the most characteristic symptom of the Black Death; the egg shape bubo. This “classic symptom of the bubonic plague was a growth the size of a nut or an apple in the armpit, in the groin, or on the neck. If the bubo was lanced and the pus thoroughly drained, the victims had a chance to recovery”. Three other symptoms very common in the bubonic plague were; petechiae, malodorousness and delirium. Pneumonic plague also known as the coughing plague, is the second type of plague. It was spread directly from person to person and the main symptom of the pneumonic plague was coughing up blood. The pneumonic plague was highly lethal; the mortality rate was between 95 and 100 percent. The third plague was the Septicemic plague, which was very rarely survived. This plague produced a great amount of plague bacilli into the blood system; “the average survival time from onset to death was 14.5