An Essay On The Bubonic Plague

The bubonic plague was the most devastating disease that broke out in Europe within the thirteen hundreds. Europe was hit with the worst epidemic that the people of this well-developed continent have ever seen. This new and deadly disease was known as the Bubonic Plague, also known as ‘The Black Death.’ The disease took less than an astounding four years to sweep across the entire continent and kill nearly half the entire population.

First signs of the plague date back to the early time, 430-426 B.C., in Athens, Greece. However, the plague first swept through Europe in 1347 and finally ended in 1951. It took over 400 years for the population of today’s England to recuperate and get back to its normal amount of people. Asia still to this day has some outbreaks of this disease, but there are not any outbreaks of the original strength that was found within Europe. The last major outbreak of the plague took place in 1722, and there are currently 2,500 cases of the plague that continue to be seen every year.

Some historians believed that with this large amount of death, the bubonic plague has caused some long term severe mental damage on the people. Even to this day, the people of Europe are still recovering from the plague even to this day. When times got tough back then, people would turn to things and try to cheer up their day even though things were terrible. People, in a sense, were putting on a front/face in order to show that they are not freaking out about this disease mentally. They would look for reasons to laugh and tells jokes in order to boost not only their moral but also the people around them. This may sound weird but the people used to make mock funerals, the people would make fun of a deceased person while they were ...

... middle of paper ...

...ts of perfumes and the daisy flower could stop the spread at the source. The well-known bird mask of the 1300’s was drawn up here; they fixated the perfume and daisy smell at the end of the nose inside of the mask. They believed that the vapors they were breathing in would not penetrate this mask; instead they would be breathing in the sweet aroma scent instead. While that was going on, different parts of the town would be ringing church bells, praying a lot, and singing gospel chants and music because they believed that the disease was a satanic problem. Another part of the town would be completely isolating themselves form everyone, their family and friends. Isolating themselves would seem like the best proposition here, but it was not. The chance of someone locking themselves away inside of a house with another person who was not infected as well was quite rare.