Black Plague Analysis

Bacteria are the simplest of organism that are alive. Bacteria are everywhere, they are in the food we consume, the soil we grow plants in, they also live inside you. They are very simple cells which are called prokaryotic cells. Which means bacteria doesn’t have an organized nucleus. Bacteria are small single cells whose whole purpose in life is to replicate. Bacteria can be helpful or harmful. One example in which bacteria can help you is through insulin. Insulin is a human hormone that helps your body function properly. Wait, but what if your body can’t produce insulin? That is when scientist take a the human hormone (insulin) and insert it into bacteria that can help your body. This is also considered biotechnology. Bacteria can also

The plague arrived at Europe when a ship docked and people came out to greet the sailors. What the people found was dead and ill sailors. The ill sailors had black boils all over them, which oozed blood and pus. The authorities forced them to leave but it was too late. Even before the black plague entered Europe, in the 1340’s the black plague spread through China, India, Persia, Syria and Egypt. Many people recorded observations and symptoms of people who have the black plague. As Giovanni Boccaccio wrote “someone who is infected with this disease would have certain swellings, either on the groin or under the armpits…waxed to the bigness of a common apple, others to the size of an egg, some more and some less, and these the vulgar named plague-boils. Blood and pus seeped out of these strange swellings, which were followed by a host of other unpleasant symptoms–fever, chills, vomiting, diarrhea, terrible aches and pains–and then, in short order, death.” The disease was so terrible people would be healthy at night then be dead by tomorrow morning. Now, scientists comprehend that the Black Death or the Black Plague, is spread by a bacillus called Yersina pestis. (The French biologist Alexandre Yersin discovered this germ at the end of the 19th century.) Yersina pestis, travels and infects from person to person ferociously. Yersina pestis can also be airborne, it even enters you through an infected rats or insect. Fun Fact the black plague infect animals as well as humans so when the sheep became infected there was a shortage of wool clothing. The main vector in this disease is yersina pestis which can travel into animal or human and infect them. Another vector is humans, animals (mostly rats), and insects, if all three of these examples are infected they can infect other humans and animals. The host