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Places Hit

Eastern Hemisphere

            The disease spread to many countries at many different times. The disease first appeared a little earlier than 541 A.D. At that time it was in Abyssinia and Byzantium, starting the spread around there. The plague hit the British Isle, which is still around the same area, between 541 and 546. Other outbreaks included ones in 542, 558, and 572. Some of the outbursts of the sickness were as late as 581, 590, and even 600!

            The outbreaks disappeared after 750 A.D. but came up again all the way in 1350 A.D. In the 1340’s, and new plague was starting to spread around Asia. It was taking over central Asia and stretching to the outside. An outburst of the new plague came up in 1346. That particular one was in Caffa, a place around Asia, and took many lives. After It went through Caffa, the disease started to spread by sea and went across to all different countries, spreading rapidly with no way to stop it.

Medicine

Farmer Pounding Roots For Medicine

               

             Sickness was thought to be cured by therapy. The people would use dietects, pharmacology, and surgery to get rid of certain sicknesses. Another way that sickness was cured was with the help of hermits and village women. They would often practice magical medicine to help cure someone or even just traditional medicine used everyday. That cure didn't last long because churches started to say that the people were witches, so they weren't too popular in the towns anymore.

             There was a theory that was about what made up the human body. They belived that we were made up of all the elements put into one person. That would mean that I haev fire, earth, air, and water all inside of me right now. I understand water and air, but they should know that people die if they catch on fire and you can't move if you are earth. Overall, medicine was much simpler back then than it is today.

       

There were very many different types of medicine back in medieval times. One way that people were healed is by drinking hot water with herbs. Now we normally call it tea. Different herbs heal different things, but you have to be careful because some herbs might heal, but they can be deadly if used too much. Another way that people were heals is by bleeding with a leech. The leech would suck out the blood which was supposed to suck out the disease along with it. It might have work sometimes, but it was probably painful too.

Starting and Spreading

            The disease started out of no where. Some people say that a group of fisherman came to a town with the disease. They came into contact with the people and by then it was too late and some people already had the disease. Another way that the Black Death started was said to be that God was punishing them. Some people said that the fisherman got the disease as a punishment from God, which would mean that both theories were true. Personally, I think it was not a punishment because it is just their religion that came up with that and there is no fact in it. The only realistic thing that could happen, that they thought of, was the fisherman coming with the disease. It would make sence to belive that because new diseases pop up all the time back then, why would they think that this disease was any different just because it was a new sickness that they had never seen?

            The disease spread around Europe very rapidly. There was becoming no place to hide from the dreadful sickness. Since the weather was becoming unusually dry, the mice were coming out and roaming the streets. These weren’t just any mice, they were mice with fleas. Fleas commonly carry diseases from animal to human, so when the fleas on the mice came in contact with humans, they had their chance. The fleas would ride on the mice then jump to humans and give them the horrible sickness. Fleas multiply fast, so the disease was spreading very easily. It would be impossible to kill all of the fleas and get rid of all infected people before it spread even more, so they probably didn’t even try. They might not have known that it was the fleas that were giving them the disease, not fisherman or punishments from God. The people didn’t have the technology to see the fleas so they couldn’t stop something they couldn’t see.

Treatments

        

Victum of the Plague

There were many ways that the disease was treated. One way was that doctors would tell the victims to wash themselves in vinegar and water. They would need to stay in bed and rest for it to work. Another way was that the doctor would cut open the swelled section that was infected so that the disease could just “flow out”. Merchants would make and sell a warm substance to put on the wound; they would make it out of tree resin and lily roots. Unfortunately, none of these techniques have worked.

When people were starting to panic, some surgeons would actually try bloodletting, which is where they would cut you and then let the cut bleed to help heal you faster. Some medicine was even created to cure the awful disease. You might have to drink crushed eggshells and marigold petals two times a day! Some people were very unlucky and were told to drink urine. They also had to hold a chicken, which was alive, to the infected area so they could pass the disease on to the animal. No cure was ever found to stop the spread, but it did, eventually, stop.

Reaction

The people reacted to the disease in many ways. Some of the townsfolk fled in fear of catching and dying of the sickness. Even important officials would flee, leaving the town in the hands of criminals. Since they controlled the towns, most wouldn’t go and just die anyways. Prisoners were being set free because there was no one left to hire to watch them.

            The death count was increasing rapidly, and the remaining survivors were running low on places to put their bodies. As a matter of fact, 25,000,000 people died in Europe alone by that point so the bodies were piling up. After more people died, the farmers started to dig great ditches and put multiple bodies in there. The prisoners that were left would do the same.

            Religion was becoming a last resort for the people to go to and feel safe. Very many widows switched to nuns in hope for protection from the disease. Since most people thought that the plague was a punishment from God, religion may save them from the sickness by giving yourself to him. It makes since, if you’re nice to someone then they will probably be nice back; if you are nice to God, he might save your life!

Town Life

Life in town would vary on where you went. In large towns, there were walls surrounding the cities to protect them from attack. The also had large gates which were the only entrance to the town. The larger towns were also very cramped, so to make up for lost ground space, people would build buildings upwards. Sometimes the people would even have their building arch over another to have more room in the upper levels. This odd shape of the buildings caused the streets far below to be shaded all day long, while the buildings got all the sunlight.

            Towns were normally cluttered in filth, such as garbage thrown from windows, dung from roaming animals, and rotting fish leftover from the butcher. People would need to watch their step if they had to walk in the streets. People also didn’t have toilets so they had to use a ditch in their backyard. They were emptied annually and the contents would be dumped in fields surrounding the town. People got sick very easily in medieval times. Sickness would come from the mess surrounding them and the crowded buildings. There were even more deaths than births! The population only grew from the new people moving in.

            One upside to the towns was the market. Each market would come once a week and merchants, peasants, and craft workers would sell their items. Arguing would happen constantly, people would argue that the price was too high or that it was too low, they would say it wasn’t going to change or threaten to price it higher. The debate would subside once the people decided on a price in the middle of their requirements.

A peasant's workshop

            Peasants were very important in medieval times; they sold goods in the market, they harvested crops, and tended to animals. One of those animals was pigs. Pigs were useful to people in many ways. Their bristles were used for brushes, their skin for leather, and their blood for black pudding. Their meat was obviously used for food; their fat was used to make candles and their bones to be boiled into a mush to feed the pigs that were still alive. Peasants had different jobs for different times of the year. When it was winter, they would clean ditches, fix fences, and put dung all over their fields to fertilize them for the spring. In spring, they plowed and planted crops. When it was June, they would cut the grass to dry into hay to feed their animals for the winter months. After that, they would weed their whole fields, which required bending over for long hours, straining on their backs. By August and September, the harvest began, they would pick and sort the crops, but after that they would beat them to separate the light from the heavy. They would then toss the mixture in the air so the light, useless crop would blow away out of the good crop. Once all the hard work was over, and they had harvested their entire field, they would have a big feast celebrating the hard times being over and that they can relax for a while. Directly after the feast, they would start the cycle over again and it would begin with a long, hungry winter.