The most infamous pandemic in history, the Black Death pandemic, ravaged Europe from 1347-1351, killing an estimated one-third of Europe's population and changing society. Divine punishment, unbalanced humours, bad air, cats, and even Jewish people were all blamed, and various remedies were introduced but could do nothing to stop the tidal wave of infection. Let's examine the Black Death!
The Black Death
This is the colloquial name for the Bubonic Plague. It came about due to the swellings that appeared on a patient's skin, which were dark in colour.
History of the Black Death
The Black Death is thought to have originated in China in the early 1300s and was spread to Europe by merchants and sailors.
The map below gives you an idea of when the Black Death reached various parts of the world:
Fig 1 - A map showing the spread of Bubonic Plague in Europe between 1347 and 1351.
The Black Death reached Britain in 1348 and gradually spread northwards, eventually reaching Northern England and Scotland.
Did you know? In 1348, Scotland saw an opportunity. The plague was ravaging England, so they thought it would be a great time to mount an invasion. They invaded, hoping to take advantage of the weakened population. However, they were unsuccessful, and they ended up bringing the plague back to Scotland!
Causes of the Black Death
The suspected causes of the Black Death were many and varied. Let's look at these causes and how the Black Death spread.
Causes
The Black Death was caused by a bacteria called Yersinia Pestis. The bacteria spread via infected fleas and, as a result, was carried around by animals and humans.
The people of Medieval England did not know this. There were a couple of common theories for the plague.
- Divine punishment - it was believed the plague had been sent by God to punish humanity for being sinful.
- Miasma - people believed the plague was being spread by bad air, in line with medical theories of the time.
Spread
In the unhygienic conditions of Medieval England, the plague spread extremely easily. Not only did people not bathe regularly, but people also used contaminated water and often ate food that was past its best. Equally, the streets were filled with mud and waste, both human and animal, due to the lack of proper sewage and waste disposal systems. This created the perfect conditions for the plague to spread.
Rats, in particular, were big carriers of infected fleas. This was especially dangerous as they were incredibly common onboard ships, which allowed easy transmission across the seas to different countries. Fleas would also be carried by cats and dogs, which were very common in urban areas.
Whose fault was it?
Facing a huge, deadly pandemic that they couldn't explain or control, people turned to blame various groups of people for the plague.
Jewish people were one of the groups most blamed for the spread of the plague. All over Europe, people blamed Jewish people, claiming that they had poisoned Christian wells and laid curses to spread the plague. This resulted in lots of violence against Jewish people. It was so bad that in 1348 Pope Clement VI issued two Papal Bulls condemning the violence.
It is worth noting that this did not happen so much in England. This was because, in 1290 CE, the Jews had been expelled from the country. This meant that England, technically, did not have a Jewish population, and therefore they could not be blamed.
Symptoms and Treatment of the Black Death
Medieval Europe had a lot of different ideas about how to treat the Bubonic Plague. As the disease ravaged towns and cities, people seemed increasingly desperate to find a cure.
Symptoms
The most common symptoms of Bubonic Plague were:
- Headache.
- Fever.
- Weakness.
- Swollen lymph nodes, known as Buboes.
- Coughing blood.
- Vomiting.
- Light intolerance.
- Dizziness.
Overall, it was a thoroughly unpleasant experience!
Treatments
Let's look at the several different ways people tried to cure the Black Death in Medieval Britain.
Prevention
Knowing that catching the plague was most likely a death sentence, many people tried to avoid the plague and prevent themselves from catching it.
For wealthy people, this was easy; they were able to move out to a residence in the country, thus escaping the urban environment where the plague spread so rapidly.
However, most people did not have this option, so they resorted to other strategies. Some common methods of preventing the plague were:
- Boiling vinegar - it was a strong smell, so people thought it would keep the miasma that caused the plague out of their homes.
- Ironically, doctors advised people to stop having baths. They thought that the steam would open up the pores of the skin and allow miasma in.
Miasma TheoryThis was the theory that diseases were spread by 'bad air'. It was thought air would become infected through rotting organic matter, such as meat or vegetables.
Religion
Many people were convinced that the Black Death was a punishment from God for the sins of humanity. Therefore, they thought the best way to try and cure themselves was to pray, confess their sins, and show God how sorry they were.
Fig. 2 An illustration demonstrating flagellation
People made pilgrimages to holy sites where they would leave offerings and lit candles in the hope that God would hear their prayers. Some people even went so far as to become flagellants, whipping themselves on the back in the streets to repent for their sins.
The Flagellant Movement
The Flagellant movement was very startling in Medieval England. Yet, it was problematic for a couple of reasons.
Firstly, flagellants would travel together in groups of two or three hundred. Of course, that number of people all crowded together only made the disease spread faster. Equally, infected wounds from flagellation could be as much a death sentence as the plague!
Flagellation was condemned in 1349 by Pope Clement VI as being heretical, and it was ordered to be suppressed. Flagellation can be seen as an example of how religion hindered medical progress in the Medieval period. Rather than look to medical science (which did not particularly exist at this time!), people looked to more extreme religious practices to tackle public health crises. The monopoly of the Church over medical knowledge in this period and their advancement of religious causes and solutions failed to help medical theory progress.
Medical
There were also attempts to cure the plague medically. The cures were based on the dominant medical theories of the day, namely miasma and the theory of the four humours.
Did you know? You've probably seen the famous images of Plague Doctors wearing those long masks, known as beaks, filled with flowers and spices to protect them from the Plague. However, they were a feature of the Early Modern plague outbreaks, not the Medieval ones!
Patients would also undergo bleeding and purging in an attempt to rebalance their humours. However, this rarely worked and often ended up weakening the patient and speeding up their death.
Bleeding
A medical treatment in which a surgeon would make a small cut or scratch on the patient and drain some of their blood with the aim of rebalancing their humours.
Purging
This was a treatment which involved making someone sick in order to rebalance their humours.
Quarantine
Whilst the remedies people came up with did not work, there was one important development in this period. The government ordered a quarantine to be enforced, ensuring that anyone infected was kept away from healthy people. This was certainly a step in the right direction - reducing contact meant that there was less of a chance someone could pass the infection on.
Quarantine
When someone with a disease is kept away from healthy people in order to stop the disease from spreading further.
The End of the Black Death
The impact of the Black Death in Medieval Europe was significant. Let's look at the short-term impacts and a long-term summary of the Black Death's effects.
Short-Term Impact
The short-term impacts of the Black Death were serious and varied. Below is an overview of how the plague immediately affected Britain in the Medieval period.
- Around 30-45% of Britain's population was killed by the Black Death, with 70% of those infected dying within five days of catching the plague.
- People were buried in mass graves, known as 'plague pits'. These are still being found today.
- For a brief period, many wars stopped due to the deaths of so many people.
- Trade also slumped for similar reasons.
- There was a labour shortage - there were not enough people to work the land, which led to the ruin of some landowners and an impact on food production.
- Wages for labourers eventually increased during this period.
Fig. 3 - An illustration of bodies being carried to a plague pit
Summary of the Black Death
The long-term impacts of the Black Death are very interesting to consider in the wider history of Britain. Below is an overview.
- An estimated 1,000 hamlets and villages disappeared due to the Black Death.
- Some people lost faith in the Catholic Church as they felt it had failed to protect them. However, the Church was still central to people's lives - it was hardly a mass rejection of religion.
- Labour shortages and higher wages meant the structure of society became more fluid.
- The Feudal system came undone, leading to the 1381 Peasants' Revolt when the government tried to stop wage increases.
- Local parishes were affected as many were left without a priest to conduct services. Recruits to the Church were noted to be of 'poor quality' - often, they were illiterate and struggled to understand scripture.
- The idea of quarantining people when they were ill was a step in the right direction for the development of public health.
- It would take around 200 years before England's population reached the levels it had been pre-Black Death.
The Black Death - Key takeaways
- The Black Death was a pandemic that occurred from 1347-1351 across Europe, killing around one-third of the population.
- In England, the plague was blamed mainly on divine punishment and miasma.
- The most common symptoms were swollen lymph nodes and coughing up blood.
- People tried to prevent and cure the plague by prayer, strong smells, and rebalancing their humours, but nothing worked.
- An important medical development was the introduction of quarantine to control the spread of the disease.
- There were severe short-term and long-term impacts.
- It was a turning point in the societal history of Britain, leading to the end of the feudal system and greater freedom for peasants.
References
- Fig. 1 - Bubonic Plague map (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bubonic_plague-en.svg) by Andy85719 (https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Andy85719&action=edit&redlink=1_) licensed under CC BY SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/)
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