Black Death

• The Black Death killed around 75 - 200 million people. This probably included half of China and 30-40% of Europe’s total population.
• It's believed that the plague originated in Asia and was carried to Europe by fleas living on the backs of black rats. These rats typically lived on ships and would easily have been transported from one country to another.
• The Plague arrived in Britain in around 1346.
• It is now thought that the Black Death was comprised of bubonic, pneumonic and septicaemic plagues.
• The common symptoms of the bubonic plague included sudden coldness, tiredness, swellings in armpits and groynes called buboes and blisters. This was followed by high fever, unconsciousness and then death.
• Pneumonic plague would attack the lungs and lead victims to cough up blood, often killing them within 48 hours.
• To begin with, bodies were buried neatly in their own coffins. However, after a while, there were so many bodies and so few people willing to be around them, that corpses were simply thrown into big pits filled with quicklime to help them rot quickly.
• Guy de Chauliac, a French surgeon said “the close position of Saturn, Jupiter and Mars” in 1345 was to blame for the Black Death.
• The clergy said that the plague was God’s punishment for society becoming so corrupt and doing things like wearing clothes that were too tight or short.
• Many in Britain believed this and stayed in infected areas, seeking forgiveness for the sins that had supposedly led to the plagues.
• Religious minorities such as the Jews were also blamed for bringing the catastrophe upon the wider population. Christians accused the Jewish population of poisoning wells in order to wipe out Christianity. As a result, hundreds of Jews were killed across Europe.
• Some turned to ancient explanations and said the dead were stuffed with evil humours. This led to people bleeding themselves.
• In Britain, sufferers were encouraged to strap live chickens to their buboes, carry sweet smelling flowers and drink rotten treacle.
• A few surgeons recommended trepanning, or boring a hole into the head, to let the devil out of the body.
• Some even took to bathing in the urine of non-infected people and others rubbed a paste made of flower roots, tree resin and human excrement into their sores.
• The Royal Court left London every summer when infection was at its highest.
• Elsewhere, many European cities established strict rules about travel. Port cities like Venice, set up a quarantine to stop ships suspected of carrying plague from entering. This helped to prevent plague outbreaks within the city.