Black Plague
...Yersinia pestis. The Black Death, also known as the Bubonic Plague, was Europe's deadliest pandemic plague of the Middle Ages. It was extremely fatal and had terrible symptoms of painful swellings; called buboes, appear in the groin or armpit.The bacillus was highly contagious and if contracted could kill within hours. This horrible plague touched down in Europe in the fall of 1347 and swept across it throughout the mid-fourteenth century having several negative and few positive effects on Europe's culture, politics, population and economy.
Transmitted by the rat flea and primarily a disease of rodents, epidemics in humans begin from contact with the fleas of infected rodents. The disease in man has three clinical forms: Bubonic, the most common form, appears to be the most widespread form during the Black Death and is characterized by swelling of the lymph nodes that bulge and form dark pustule buboes. The spread of the infection among rodents in the locality of human dwellings creates conditions favourable for outbreaks of a human plague. When an outbreak reduces the rodent population, fleas from the dead animals fail to find another rodent host and thus begin to infest man. Plague is transmitted to human beings by bites from infected fleas or rats or by close contact with an infected person. The typical Bubonic Plague of the Black Death is mainly carried by rats, and rats are attracted by filth. George Sternberg, in his “History and Geographic distribution of Bubonic Plague” confirms this: All authorities agree that filth, famine and overcrowding of dwellings are potent factors in the propagation of the plague, and it is for this reason that it is to a large extent a disease of the poor, and that epidemics are especially liable to occur during times of distress from insufficient harvests or the ravages of war. The feudal system and Hundred Years...
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