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The black death research paper
The black death research paper
The black death research paper
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“I think a rat just climbed up my leg, Dad. And I’ve got fleas, too.” “John, there’s all this Black Death and all you care about is a few fleas and a rat. That’s my dad. Typical peasant farmer, cares just about everything except for a few fleas and rats. My mom? She died of the plague a few weeks ago. I still remember how once my mother was the most beautiful woman in my village. Nobody recognised her body when she was hauled into a plague pit. My father was especially devastated. I had to drag him to church, and I did all the housework and had to farm food or else we would starve. On and on this went, for months and months, and finally, one day, my father decided to open the door and took a deep breath of the fresh, no, ahem, plague-filled air. Guess what? I was right about the air. A few days later, my father said he felt really hot. Over the next few days, black spots and boils started appearing all over my father’s body. I knew that he was soon going to die. As he lay on his deathbed, he told me, “John, once I die, the officials are going to board the house up. I don’t know...
“Have you no sense child,” Papa yelled as he smacked John in the head, “all are dying, we need to leave at once to save ...
“My daddy died in nineteen ought nineteen of the epidemic flu and I never had a thing to do with it. He was buried in Mount Hopewell Baptist Churchyard.” ( pg 949)
I wanted to go to him and ask him what was wrong, but I didn’t dare…But then I couldn’t stand it anymore and I got up and ran down the hall to the kitchen. There, in the middle of the room, wearing his Goodyear jacket and work clothes was my father. He was on his hands and knees, his head hanging as though it were too heavy to support, and he was rocking back and forth and babbling in a rhythmical stutter. It’s funny, but the first thing I thought when I saw him like that was the way he used to let me ride on his back, when I was little, bucking and neighing like a horse. And as soon as I thought it, I felt my heart lurch in my chest.
No other epidemic reaches the level of the Black Death which took place from 1348 to 1350. The epidemic, better regarded as a pandemic, shook Europe, Asia, and North Africa; therefore it deems as the one of the most devastating events in world history. In The Black Death: The Great Mortality of 1348-1350, John Aberth, compiles primary sources in order to examine the origins and outcomes of this deadly disease. The author, a history professor and associate academic dean at Vermont’s Castleton State College, specializes in medieval history and the Black Death. He wrote the book in order to provide multiple perspectives of the plague’s impact. Primarily, pathogens started the whole phenomenon; however, geological, economic, and social conditions
Multiple circumstances within the cities, families, and organizations of societies contributed to the rapid spread of the plague. Rats, ticks and other rodents or insects where one of the reason the plague spread throughout the world and most of Europe. The ticks and fleas where infected with the disease and they bit the rats and other rodents, which infected them with the disease. The ticks and fleas also bit other rodents, livestock and even the attached themselves to humans and transferred the disease to them. The rats or other rodents ran throughout the place they where bit by the tick. Some of the rodents began to go into ship yards and trains. They bread with other rats and begin to produce offspring which created an even bigger problem. The rodents got onto the ships and where transported around the world, along with the now infected materials on board. The rats would drop their feces around the ship and even on the drinking water and food. When the ships docked at ship yards around the world the rats got off and ran around the new country they now belonged to. Some of the supplies that where taken off of the ship included but was not limited to, liquids, foods and livestock. These supplies where shipped around the world and contributed greatly to the spread of the disease.
All of Camus' writings may be viewed as a quest for meaningful values in a world of spiritual aridity and emptiness. He begins with man's despair, estrangement, fear, suffering and hopelessness in a world where is neither God nor the promise that He will come- the fundamental absurdity of existence- but ultimately affirms the power of man to achieve spiritual regeneration and the measure of salvation possible in an absurd universe. This radical repudiation of despair and nihilism is closely bound up with his concept of an artist. Camus conceives of art as a way of embracing a consciousness of the absurdity of man's existential plight. But art becomes a means of negating that absurdity because the artist reconstructs the reality, endowing it with unity, endurance and perfection. By taking elements from reality that confirms the absurd existence, an artist attempts to correct the world by words and redistribution. Thus the artist never provides a radical transformation of reality but a fundamental reinterpretation of what already exists. He provides a new angle of vision of perceiving reality. That is why, for Camus, an artist is a recreator of myth. He teaches humanity that contemporary man must abandon the old myths that have become otiose, though once defined his existence. The artist liberates man to live in his world by redefining both man and the condition in which he exists. In this regard, it is important to point out that, for Camus, the traditional opposition between art and philosophy is arbitrary. It is because they together become most effective to create the redefinition: the philosophy awakens the consciousness and the art, propelled by such a radical discovery, ...
In Robert S. Gottfried’s book titled “The Black Death”, he analyzes the 14th century outbreak from an epidemiological perspective. The book is written as a historical account of one of the greatest epidemics on record. Gottfried is a well renowned Professor of History as well as the Director of Medieval Studies at Rutgers University. Another one of his books titled, "Epidemic Disease in Fifteenth Century England” focuses on the additional outbreaks that occurred in Europe after the Black Death plague. The Black Death also called the Great Pestilence the was the second of three pandemic plagues known and is considered one of the most damaging pandemics in human history, resulting in the deaths of an estimated 25-50% of the Europe's population in the years 1348 to 1350. The origins of the plague began with east-west trade. In 1347 the Black Death entered Constantinople and spread throughout Byzantium and the Eastern Mediterranean, it is theorized that foreign rats migrating with the eastern trade carried the disease called Y. pestis to the west, fleas that were feeding on those rats then transmitted the infection to livestock and humans. The epidemic spread at an alarming rate and had devastating effects once contracted, at its peak the plague is said to have taken up to 1000 lives a day.
The Bubonic Plague, was a natural form of population control. Before the plague, life in
Europe, in the Middle Ages, began to arise with new inventions, like the printing press, that helped many people in that time period, to advance in their education and their labor work, but before all that time, there was the rise of a strong and deadly disease that infected and killed millions of people throughout the world. Before the Black Plague, there were other diseases that had spread around Europe before the Middle Ages but it wasn’t as quickly and deadly as the Black Plague. The Black Plague was found to have come from animals, like rats, but it was mostly from the fleas that were on the rats. The plague in the middle ages had an advantage in Europe due to the overpopulation and the lack of space also because the medicine that was
A devastating widespread disease that resulted in about 75 million deaths was known as the Black Death. The disease came from fleas that came off of rats that were commonly found in towns and cities. The fleas would bite the victims, injecting them with the disease. Fleas and rats could be found almost anywhere but they were mainly aboard ships of all kind. This is how the Black Death made its way through European ports. This disease could also be spread through the air from person to person. According to one doctor “instantaneous death occurs when the aerial spirit escaping from the eyes of the sick man strikes the healthy person standing near and looking at the sick” There was no medical knowledge to help the people neither cure nor stop the disease. This sent all of Europe in a panic and changed many of their lives forever.
It has been called “the greatest catastrophe ever.” That statement was made in reference to the Black Death which was one of many bubonic plague epidemics. Throughout history, the bubonic plague proved itself to be an extremely lethal disease. Outbreaks of the bubonic plague were devastating because of the stunning number of deaths in each of the populations it reached. The Black Death was the worst epidemic and disaster of the bubonic plague in all of history. The Black Death refers to a period of several years in which affected populations were decimated. The bubonic plague is a disease started by bacteria. The disease has horrible symptoms, and most of the victims die after getting the plague. The bubonic plague spread easily between different areas of people. The Black Death was not the first epidemic of the bubonic plague; there was another outbreak several hundred years before. It is important to understand the history of the bubonic plague and reflect upon the Black Death because plague outbreaks can still occur today.
The Black Death in the Middle Ages was it what the people and even scientist of that time thought that it was “God’s will intervening” or was it just circumstance that combined to make it the perfect breeding ground for the disease to spread? Even though the people of that time didn’t know the disease as the Black Death they did know that there was a sickness that was going around and by the end of it about 50 percent of the population would be killed from it (Rhodes 2013). The Black Death did shatter the population but it also lead to many benefits for those that survived such as improved environmental, health, economic and social changes.
The Black Death discusses the causes and results of the plague that devastated medieval Europe. It focuses on the many effects it had on the culture of medieval Europe and the possibility that it expedited cultural change. I found that Robert S. Gottfried had two main theses in the book. He argued that rodent and insect life cycles, as well as the changing of weather systems affect plague. He claimed that the devastation plague causes is partly due to its perpetual recurrences. Plague ravaged Europe in cycles, devastated the people when they were recuperating. As can be later discovered in the book, the cycles of plague consumed the European population. A second thesis, which he described in greater detail, was that the plagues expedited the process of cultural change. The plagues killed a large percentage of each generation, leaving room for change. The Black Death covers the affects that numerous plagues had on the culture. The cycle of the plagues struck each generation. After a plague ravaged Europe from 599-699, plague killed in 608, 618, 628, 640, 654, 684-686, 694-700, 718, and 740-750. In the early stages of the above series, intervals are apparent. These intervals demonstrate the cycles of the rodent and insect life. Robert S. Gottfried also argues, rightfully so, that plague may have hastened cultural change. Along with plagues came the need for a cure. Plague destroyed the existing medical systems, and was replaced by a modern heir. Previous to the plague, scientists based their knowledge on early scientists such as Hippocrates and Galen. Scientists knew little about what they were doing. The medical community was divided into five parts. These divisions were physicians, surgeons, barber-...
Majority of Today’s Historians and scientist will tell you that the Bubonic Plague started through rats and other rodents, when really a flea has fed off of an infected rat, which is transferred to a human’s bloodstream through the blood sucking transaction. Many Europeans believed the Plague is the raft of god for wrong-doing. The Bubonic Plague is actual...
As I walked in to their bedroom, I found my mother sitting on the bed, weeping quietly, while my father lay on the bed in a near unconscious state. This sight shocked me, I had seen my father sick before, but by the reaction of my mother and the deathly look on my father’s face I knew that something was seriously wrong.