Medieval Brtain c1200-1500 Page 4

• Black Death


  A terrifying new disease that swept through Europe in 1348
• The Black Death was far more devastating than other epidemics that regularly hit Britain, such as ergotism and dysentery
• Bubonic plague


  The disease that medieval people called 'the Great Pestilence'
• How the Black Death spread

  1. People were infected when they were bitten by a flea carrying the plague germ

  2. The fleas carrying the germs lived on black rats, which infested the ships on trade routes between Asia and Europe

  3. The rats came ashore off the ships and spread the disease inland

  4. Fleas on humans, as well as body lice, may have carried the germ and helped to spread the disease through bedding and clothing
• Variants of the plague

  • Pneumonic plague (spread through coughing and sneezing)
  • Septicaemic plague (killed its victim through the bloodstream)
• Most people who were infected suffered from bubonic plague
• Bubonic plague


  Caused hard, painful swellings called buboes underneath the skin, underneath the armpits and in the groin, a high temperature, and severe headaches
• Victims usually died within a few days
• It is estimated that two out of three people who caught the Black Death died from it
• The death rate among the population as a whole was somewhere between 35 and 60 per cent
• The disease spread rapidly and ordinary life became impossible, with local communities finding it extremely difficult to cope
• Priests and local churches could not keep up with visiting the dying or providing funerals, and victims were often buried together in mass graves
• In towns, many people shut themselves inside and threw waste outside their houses, and sometimes bodies were thrown on the street
• People left the towns when the disease hit, if they could afford to do so
• The Black Death originated in Asia

  1346
• The Black Death arrived in the south west of England


  Summer 1348
• The disease had spread into the north of England, Wales and Ireland


  End of 1349
• The Black Death had reached Scotland

  1350