The Black Death

1. The Black Death by Logan Smith For Mrs. Waterbury – Gifted Ed May 7, 2008

2. The Black Death • What was the Black Death? • Could you avoid it? • What caused it? • Where did it spread?

3. What was the Black Death? • The black death was a plague that almost wiped out Europe. • If you had the black death you would often throw up and get bubo's (large swellings). • If you got the black death there was no way you could stop it. • Once you showed signs of the plague, you were isolated from your family.

4. Could you avoid it? • Keep mint or pennyroyal on your body. • Keep clothes in a cedar chest • Use plenty of soap. • Go to an isolated villa to avoid contact with plague victims. • Get armies to do your bidding • Bloodletting – cut a vein or artery to let the “BAD” blood out. There was really no way to avoid the plague, but medieval people had their own remedies:

5. If we went back in time, we would: • Keep some clean clothes tightly folded and bound up in cloth treated with mint or pennyroyal, preferably in a cedar chest far from all animals and vermin. • At the first whisper of plague in the area, flee any populated town or village and head for an isolated villa, far from any trade routes, with your cedar chest. • Vigilantly clean every last corner of your villa, killing all rats and burning their corpses. • Use plenty of mint or pennyroyal to discourage fleas. • Allow no cats or dogs to come near you. • Once away from all human contact, wash in extremely hot water, change into your clean clothes, and burn the clothes you traveled in. • Keep a minimum distance of 25 feet from any other human being to avoid catching any pneumonic form spread through breathing and sneezing. • Bathe in hot water as frequently as you can. • Keep a fire burning in your villa to ward off the bacillus, and stay as close to it as you can stand, even in summer. • Have your armies burn and raze to the ground any nearby houses where plague victims have resided. • Pray to the deity or the saint of your choice frequently and fervently. • Stay where you are until six months after the most recent nearby outbreak.

6. What caused the Black Death? • A flea bit a rat that was infected with the plague. • The flea later bit a human. • The flea regurgitated the rats blood into the human. • The human got the plague.

7. Where did it spread? • There was a very serious outbreak of the plague in Europe in the 1300s. • It targeted England, France, Germany and Italy. • One out of every 3 people in Europe died from it. • Its main target was Bavaria.

8. The Flagellants • The flagellants were very religious people who thought that the plague was caused by evil spirits in their body. • They thought if they whipped themselves or each other, the could drive the evil spirits out. • They really only hurt themselves. • It didn’t keep them from getting the plague!

9. The Black Death – a video

10. Sources • http://www.middle-ages.org.uk/black-death.htm info on the black death • http://www.yesnet.yk.ca/schools/projects/middleages2000/blackdeath/blackdeath.html animated map of black death path in Europe • http://www.awesomestories.com/disasters/stories/black_death/images/swollen.node.jpg - picture of nodes • http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/med/marchione.html the account of a person who lived through the plague • http://streaming.discoveryeducation.com/search/searchResults.cfm?N=0&Nty=1&Ntk=All&blnSearchInit=true&Ntt=black+death&Nr= info on the black death • http://www.nlm.nih.gov/exhibition/perez/drawings/plague.gif - picture of man on rat • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bubonic_plague - info and picture of a flea • http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/48/Flagellants.png - info and picture of the flagellants • http://www.gii.in/wallpapers/data/media/80/Grim-Reaper-Tattoos-2.jpg front picture • http://www.historyforkids.org/learn/science/medicine/plague.htm - where it spread

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