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In this article, I will write about the plague, a contagious disease that has raged since ancient times and was feared in 14th century Europe as the Black Death. In English, plague is translated as "plague. The word "plague" also means "infectious disease" in the broadest sense of the word, indicating that plague was such a threat that it was considered to be the most common infectious disease. Plague is mainly transmitted by the bite of a flea carrying the plague bacillus. It is also said to be transmitted by contact with plague-infected rats or the blood of infected people. Rats are exterminated to prevent the plague because they serve as hosts for fleas and spread the plague epidemic.
There are different types of plague depending on the location of infection and symptoms. The two main types are glandular plague, which infects the lymph nodes, and pneumonic plague. Pneumonic plague can also be spread by droplet infection from coughs of infected people. According to medieval researchers, the plague killed between 75 and 200 million people between 1348 and 1351. This means that about half of the population of Europe died. It has also been noted that mortality rates by region are strongly influenced by population density.
The mortality rate was as high as 75-80% in Italy, Spain, and southern France, while in England and Germany it was estimated to be as low as 20%. The densely populated and unsanitary cities of medieval Europe were the hardest hit, with Paris, Florence, and Hamburg losing half their populations in the first pandemic. In the less densely populated countryside, on the other hand, the mortality rate was much lower.
-- Fifty Animals that Changed the Course of History
And, not surprisingly, jihadists and monks were especially numerous victims, since they treated their patients directly. In the eyes of the medieval population, the epidemic would have been the work of an angry God or an evil man. After all, it was believed that the body was animated by four kinds of bodily fluids: blood, black bile, yellow bile, and mucus. Disease was thought to be caused by an imbalance of these four fluids, and miasma (bad air) was thought to spread disease (plague). It was also believed that blood had two pathways, the arterial blood produced by the heart and the dark venous blood produced by the liver, and that blood stagnated or pooled here and there in the body, causing disease.
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Doctors who treated patients with contagious diseases were called plague doctors. They protected themselves from the miasma by wearing clothing that covered their entire body. The purpose of the plague doctors was to dispel the miasma by dressing up in eerie outfits. At that time, it was also believed that direct eye contact with a patient could transmit contagious diseases, so beads were sometimes worn over the eyes. (This is similar to the legend that if you make eye contact with a medusa, you will turn to stone.) It was also popular to wear masks that looked like beaks. The beak was stuffed with dried flowers, spices, and herbs to ward off the miasma.
Due to an unknown contagious disease, some Christian extremist groups began to whip themselves while walking in public, and were called "whipping tormentors. They sought to appease God's wrath by shedding their own blood to repent and ask forgiveness for the sins they had committed.
The plague brought not only disease but also persecution. Although Jews were originally discriminated against, some people claimed that Jews spread the disease by poisoning wells, and this awareness of persecution led to the later genocide of Jews throughout Western Europe.
Was the plague a good thing? It also brought some good. The rapid decline in population broke the vicious cycle of famine, crop failures, and economic depression that had plagued Europe in the first half of the 14th century. Because of the shortage of labor, peasants, once land-locked, were now hired and paid wages, resulting in the issuance of money and a higher standard of living. The plague also increased occupational and class mobility because of the high mortality rate among all classes. Above all, the authority of the church, which had failed to prevent the disease, was rapidly eroding.
But Europe not only survived the Black Death, it revived with additional vitality. （Historians regard the post-Black Death period as the starting point of capitalism in Western Europe.
-- Fifty Animals that Changed the Course of History
Together, these elements led to the Renaissance, in which art, philosophy, science, and technology flourished. There were three major epidemics of plague: the first spread in Europe, centered in Constantinople, from the 6th to the 8th century; the second, introduced here, spread in Europe in the 14th century; the third, spread in China and India over more than a century, from 1855 to 1959; and the third, spread in the United States in the 19th century. 1959 is a fairly recent date. The third was in China and India over a century, from 1855 to 1959. 1959 is a fairly recent date, and it claimed millions of victims. Although there have been no major outbreaks of the plague in recent years, the concern remains.
Rats are now being carried by humans to every corner of the earth; from 1944-1993, there were 362 cases in the western United States. Although there are no reported cases of plague today, it is still a familiar problem.
-- Fifty Animals that Changed the Course of History
Furthermore, in 1995, antibiotic-resistant strains of plague were discovered on the island of Madagascar. If antibiotics are ineffective, it is quite troublesome. There is no guarantee that there will not be a fourth major outbreak in the future.
