H002-005 The Black Death 10/29/2018

The Black Death

struck England in 1349, reducing the population by as much as a third.

The Black Death or Plague, as it was called described an acute, infectious, contagious disease of rodents and humans, caused by a short, thick, gram-negative bacteria. There were actually 3 types of plagues: bubonic, pneumonic & septicemic. (Yes - a plague/wide outspread of disease is a disease. All three killed mass numbers of people. But there are some slight differences. You won’t be asked to distinguish between the three or for that matter to know the actual names of the three, but for the sake of the curious here’s a breakdown of the cruesome plagues.) The Bubonic plague is so called because it is characterized by the appearance of buboes, or enlarged, inflamed lymph nodes, in the groin or armpit or on the neck. Bubonic plague is transmitted by the bite of any of numerous insects that are normally parasitic on rodents/rats. It is was carried by a flea found on the brown rat. Pneumonic plague, so called because the lung is the site of infection, is most often transmitted by droplets sprayed from the lungs and mouth of infected persons; the infection may spread from the lungs to other parts of the body, resulting in septicemic plague, which is infection of the blood. Septicemic plague may also be initiated by direct contact of contaminated hands, food, or objects with the mucous membranes of the nose or throat.

Untreated bubonic plague is fatal in 30 to 75 percent of all cases, pneumonic plague 95 percent of the time, and septicemic plague almost 100 percent. Mortality in treated cases is 5 to 10 percent.

How do you know if you haveThe Plague ? ...... the Symptoms

In bubonic plague, the first symptoms are headache, nausea, vomiting, aching joints, and a general feeling of ill health. The lymph nodes of the groin or, less commonly, of the armpit or neck, suddenly become painful and swollen. The temperature, accompanied by shivering, rises to between 38.3° and 40.5° C (101° and 105° F). The pulse rate and respiration rate are increased, and the victim becomes exhausted and apathetic. The buboes swell until they approximate a chicken egg in size. In nonfatal cases, the temperature begins to fall in about five days, and approaches normal in about two weeks. In fatal cases, death results in about four days. In primary pneumonic plague, the sputum is at first slimy and tinted with blood; it later becomes free-flowing and bright red. Death occurs in most cases two or three days after the first appearance of symptoms. In primary septicemic plague, the victim has a sudden onset of high fever and turns deep purple in several hours, often dying within the same day that symptoms first develop.The purple color, which appears in all plague victims during their last hours, is due to respiratory failure; the popular name Black Death that is applied to the disease is derived from this symptom.

Prevention and Treatment

Many preventive measures, such as sanitation, killing of rats, and prevention of the transport of rats in ships arriving from ports in which the disease is endemic, are effective in reducing the incidence of plague. Famine, which reduces resistance to the disease, results in spread of plague. Individuals who have contracted the disease are isolated, put to bed, and fed fluids and easily digestible foods. Sedatives are used to reduce pain and to quiet delirium. During World War II, scientists using sulfa drugs were able to produce cures of plague; subsequently, streptomycin and tetracyclines were found to be more effective in controlling the disease.

Now mind you this is all well and good, but think back to the time of the actualPlague - the 1300s. Sanitation??? What do you need for sanitation? How about water? What about sewage/human waste? What about garbage? What happens to some types of food such as milk, meat, fish, butter, and vegetables if you leave them out overnight during the summer? (The absent-minded bachelor is speaking here from personal experience.) Do you know without having to see something to realize that something has gone bad? We have a thing called refrigeration today - a product of the 20th century, what about then? And speaking of technology - what about medical technology? How far have we come with medicine? Today if you get a bad cut what do you do? We have a big thing about “clean” needles. What about then? For that matter what about today in many underdeveloped countries such as Egypt? I can speak from personal experience that at the end of a military exercise in Egypt back in the 1980s instead of shipping back medicine that would expire in months and thus become useless to us (Americans) we gave it to the out military counterparts in the Egyptian Air Force for whom such supplies are often scarce and hard to come by. Expiration date? Didn’t matter to the Egyptians --- As far as they were concerned the stuff was still good. Now when you think of about all of this is there any reason why when a disease struck it could wipe out a good portion of the population?

Yes - the Plague has been known for at least 3000 years. Epidemics have been recorded in China since 224 BCE. The disease occurred in huge pandemics that destroyed the entire populations of cities throughout the Middle Ages; they have occurred sporadically since that time. The last great pandemic began in China in 1894 and spread to Africa, the Pacific islands, Australia, and the Americas, reaching San Francisco in 1900. Plague still occurs occasionally in Asia, Africa, South America, and Australia, but rarely appears in the U.S. Ever hear of the Ebola virus outbreak in Africa? There has been another breakout in Ghana during this decade. Two small, well-contained outbreaks occured in India in 1994. In 1950 the World Health Organization initiated sanitation programs for plague control throughout the world.

QUESTIONS
1. What is another term for “The Black Death”?

2. When did the Black Death occur?

3. What were some of the causes of the Black Death?

4. How did you know if you caught the disease?

5. What were your chances of surviving the Black Death?

6. How long did you have to live once you got it?

7. Is “plague” unknown to us today?

8. What can be done today to prevent wide outbreaks of disease from occurring that couldn’t be/wasn’t done back in the 1300s?

9. What group do you think was blamed for causing the Black Death?

10. What was the overall impact of “the Black Death” on England’s population?

Base your answers to questions 11 and 12 on the map below and on your knowledge of social studies.

11. The information shown on this map suggests that the Black Death spread to Europe as

a result of contact with

(1) merchants from western Africa (3) barbarians from Scandinavia

(2) traders from Asia (4) explorers returning from the Americas [REGENTS: June 2009]

12. Based on this map, what is a valid conclusion about the Black Death?

(1) Japan was the first place it occurred.

(2) The highest casualty rates occurred in Mogadishu and Foochow.

(3) People of North Africa, Europe, and Asia were affected by the disease.

(4) The outbreak spread primarily from the west to the east. [REGENTS: June 2009]

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