FREE ESSAY ON BUBONIC PLAGUE

BUBONIC PLAGUE

The Bubonic Plague, or Black Death, had many negative as well as positive effects
on medieval Europe. While being one of the worst and deadliest diseases in the history
of
the world, it indirectly helped Europe break grounds for some of the basic necessities
for
life today. 
The Black Death erupted in the Gobi Desert in the late 1320s, but one really
knows why. The plague bacillus was alive and active long before that; as Europe itself
had suffered an epidemic in the 6th century. But the disease had lain relatively dormant
in
the succeeding centuries. It is believed that the climate of Earth began to cool in the
14th
century, and perhaps this so-called little Ice Age had something to do with it becoming
more active than normal (Knox 2). Whatever the reason, we know that the outbreak
began there and spread outward. While it did go west, it spread in every direction, and
the
Asian nations suffered as cruelly as anywhere. In China, for example, the population
dropped from around 125 million to 90 million over the course of the 14 century. The
plague moved along the caravan routes toward the West. By 1345 it had made it's way to
the lower Volga River. By early 1347 it was in Constantinople. It hit Alexandria in the
autumn of that year, and by spring 1348, a thousand people a day were dying there. In
Cairo, Egypt, the count was seven times that. The disease traveled by ship as readily as
by
land and it was no sooner in the eastern Mediterranean than it was in the western end as
well. Already in 1347, the plague had hit Sicily. By winter the plague had reached
mainland Italy. By January of 1348, the plague was in Marseilles, and it reached Paris
in
the spring of 1348. By September of 1348 the Bubonic Plague had worked its way into
England.
Bubonic plague was caused by the bacteria Yersinia Pestis. It is an organism most
usually carried by rodents. Fleas infest the rodents (rats, but other rodents as well),
and
these fleas move freely over to human hosts. The flea then regurgitates the blood from
the
rat into the human, infecting the human. The rat dies. The human dies. The flea's life is
not
effected (Gregg 126). 
Symptoms include high fevers, aching limbs and vomiting of blood. The most
noticeable characteristic is a swelling of the lymph nodes. Lymph nodes are found in the
neck, armpits and groin. The swellings are easily visible and its blackish coloring
gives
the disease its name: The Black Death. The swellings continue to expand until they
eventually burst, with death following soon after. The whole process, from first
symptoms of fever and aches, to final expiration, lasts only three or four days. The
swiftness of the disease, the terrible pain, the grotesque appearance of the victims,
all
served to make the plague especially terrifying.
Bubonic plague is usually fatal, though not inevitably so. Historians have been
hard pressed to explain the extraordinary mortality of the 1348 outbreak. Their best
guess
is that there was more than one variety of plague at work in Europe. There are two other
varieties of plague: septicaemic plague, which attacks the blood, and pneumonic plague,
which attacks the lungs. The pneumonic plague is especially dangerous as it can be
transmitted through the air. Both of these two are nearly 100% fatal. It seems likely
that
some form of pneumonic plague was at work alongside the bubonic plague in those awful
years.
Bibliography
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