Frederick’s move into the Alban hills did not stop the epidemic, however, to the point that by mid-summer there were “scarcely any left who did not feel the deliberating effects of the burning heat and the unwholesome air.” As a result, Frederick retreated to Germany, crossing the Alps by the end of September. One interesting point that should be made about Otto’s account is his mention of the Dog Star. This may just be a literary conceit on his part: in Homer, Sirius is described as an evil star and the “harbinger of fevers”. More intriguingly, Otto’s allusion to the Dog Star may also reflect indigenous Italian knowledge about malaria infection. As Italian malaria expert Paula Corti has pointed out, Italian peasants traditionally associated …show more content…
According to the Otto of Freising, shortly after Frederick conquered Rome and installed his puppet pope Paschal III, “a severe pestilence attacked the army and in large measure destroyed it”. Historians have traditionally accepted that this was a malaria epidemic given its location (the malarious environs of Rome) and its timing (August 2nd). In a recent work, however, John Freed has argued against malaria as a causal agent: although he admits that one of the epidemic’s symptoms was high fever, he noted that the epidemic shortly followed a torrential downpour, which points to a gastrointestinal infection from polluted water supplies. This rules out malaria, according to Freed, as “the eight-day incubation period of malaria precludes it from being the primary cause of the epidemic that began killing a large number of men within hours of the storm.” The problem with Freed’s argument is that most diarrheal diseases also have their own incubation period. Typhoid, the gastrointestinal infection most closely associated with epidemics in marching armies, shows no symptoms from between to six to thirty days after exposure, and bacterial dysentery requires 2 to 10 days to show symptoms. In all likelihood, the rainstorm was entirely unrelated to the fever outbreak, and was remembered mainly because of the medieval
The exposure to the contaminated food happened during the Memorial Day service celebration, which was May 30th. According to the case study, onset of symptoms occurred from June 5th to June 28th. Therefore, the incubation period from this case ranged from seven days to thirty days. According to Heymann (2014), the incubation period for Typhoid fever ranges from 3 days to over 60 days, with the usual range from eight to fourteen days. A graph of the incubation period is provided in Figure
Kohn, George Childs. "Black Death." Encyclopedia of Plague and Pestilence: From Ancient Times to the Present, Third Edition. New York: Facts On File, Inc., 2008. Ancient and Medieval History Online. Facts On File, Inc. http://www.fofweb.com/activelink2.asp?
One of the largest epidemic events in history, the Bubonic Plague had a devastating effect on European society. It is believed to have begun in China, and it reached European soil in 1347, when it struck Constantinople (Document 1). It was carried by infected fleas that spread the disease between humans and rats. A symptom of the plague was the development of large, dark swellings called “buboes” on the victim’s lymph nodes. By the time the plague left, Europe’s population had been reduced by almost half. The devastation as a result of the plague may seem shocking, but there were several important factors that contributed to its deadliness.
Many people of this time thought the Plague arrived due to their sins as accounted by Gabriele de’ Mussis. “I pronounce these judgment: may your joys be turned to mourning, your prosperity be shaken by adversity, the course of your life be passed in never ending terror…no one will be given rest, poisoned arrows will strike everyone, fevers will throw down the proud, and incurable disease will strike like lightning” This quote reveals that God imposed the plague onto the people and they had to suffer due to their sins. In another section of this book, there is an excerpt from Giovanni Boccaccio’s Decameron. In it he describes the symptoms the people in the city of Florence suffered due to this disease. “It’s earliest symptom, in men and women alike, was the appearance of certain swellings in the groin or the armpit, some of which were egg shaped while some where the size of a common apple…Later on…people began to find dark botches and bruises on their arms, thighs, and other parts of the body” This source is one of many found in Horrox’s book that all list the same symptoms for this mysterious disease throughout all of
The last time Typhus was recorded was by the British Troops during World War II. They had forty two cases of Typhus in 1942 and that was one year after the allied forces arrived. Then the year after that there was five hundred and eighty two cases of Typhus...
Medical science had not yet discovered the importance of antiseptics in preventing infection. Water was contaminated and soldiers sometimes ate unripened or spoiled food. There weren’t always clean rags available to clean wounds. Because of frequent shortages of water, surgeons often went days without washing their hands or instruments. So now germs were passing from patient to patient.
Through the eyes of Boccaccio, plague in the City of Florence due has formed three basic forms of social groups. First, there were people who believed that "a sober and abstemious mode of living considerably reduced the risk of infection" therefore they lived in isolation from the rest of the people (Boccaccio 7).
An unknown eye witness accounts details of the immediate stress the plague brought to Europe. "Realizing what a deadly disaster had come to them, the people quickly drove the Italians from their city. But the disease remained, and soon death was everywhere. Fathers abandoned their sick sons. Lawyers refused to come and make out wills for the dying.
The Cholera Epidemic of 1873 in the United States. 43d Cong. , 2d Sess. House. The.
The Web. The Web. 24 Mar. 2011. The. http://liboc.tctc.edu:2058/ps/i.do?&id=GALE%7CH1420001374&v=2.1&u=tricotec_main&it=r&p=LitRC&sw=w> The "Plague".
Marshall, L. (1994). Manipulating the sacred: Image and plague in Renaissance Italy. Renaissance Quarterly, 47(3), 485-532. Retrieved from EBSCOhost.
18). The source then goes into detail of the events of the besiege of Caffa. Relations between Italian Merchants and Moghuls became uneasy leading to the siege. De Mussis writes how the Christians in the city were trapped for 3 years. During this time the Tartars (the besiegers) started to become ill with the plague and that thousands at a time would die. The Tartars then decided use “biological warfare” and catapult the diseased corpses into the city. Causing the Christians to flee on ship to Genoa. de’ Mussis goes into detail of how the plague spread from Genoa, blaming what happened in countries like Sicily and all of Italy. “Speak, Genoa, of what you have done. Describe, Sicily and Isole Pelagie, the judgements of God. Recount, Venice, Tuscany and the whole of Italy, what you have done” (Horrox, de’ Mussis pg. 19). He continues to go into more depth of how people were becoming infected. Gabriele de’ Mussis’s passage ends with him writing on how it was a time of suffering and that it came from God’s hand, and continues into some symptoms of the plague and accounts of how some patients with the plague had been cured do to a ointment and cutting of the boils that grew on their
Gottfried, Robert S. The Black Death: Natural and Human Disaster in Medieval Europe. New York:
Imagine a world where there was a great chance of a mother dying right after giving birth to her child. Sounds like a pretty crazy supposition. Unfortunately, not too long ago, that was the world we called home. Nuland’s book discusses the unfortunate tragedies of puerperal fever and the journey the medical field in Europe took to discover a cause and prevention. Hand in hand, Nuland also depicts the life of Ignác Semmelweis, the unknown founder of the aforementioned cause and prevention strategies: washing hands in chloride of lime. The Doctors’ Plague is a worthwhile read based off the information provided, its ability to break new ground, and the credibility of its author and sources.