Essay On The Black Plague

In the mid 13th century Europe was devastated with a disease that wiped out a large portion of their population. This disease was called the plague.The plague was a disease with a name Yersinia Pestis. This disease was spread by fleas on small rodents such as black rats. Black rats were the most accused for the spread of the black plague. Once the flea is on a human it will infect a human by putting infected blood into the humans blood stream. Once infected you would start getting symptoms like high fever, rapid pulse, headache, body aches, and weakness. Your fingers toes and lips would also turn black/blue. The average time to die from the time you start receiving symptoms is 72 hours. Gabrielle de’ Mussi lived in Sicily when they plague broke out. He wrote, “They in turn soon infected their whole families, who in three days succumbed, and were buried in one common grave.”

The plague originated with the Mongols in the Gobi desert in the year 1235.

The way it traveled on land was fleas would get on horses that would travel on the silk road. It traveled faster by going from sea port to sea port. Black rats would live on ships with the infected fleas . The rats would get off at each port carrying the disease with them. The first European city hit was Sicily, Italy.

The plague swept through killing about 70 million people. This was over half the population at the time. This had a major effect on the economy. One of the biggest effect was that most work ceased because of lack of workers. People were also left with an abundance of goods because the infected would die so fast. With less workers those who could work had much higher pay. Manors were at high threat they were very low on workers and without workers they could not operate on their own. Serfs were now free. If they left their master they would instantly be hired by another one because workers were so