The Black Plague

1. The Black Plague Randa Scott Project Freeman

2. Summary • The Black Death arrived in Europe by sea in October 1347 when 12 Genoese trading ships docked at the Sicilian port of Messina after a long journey through the Black Sea. The people who gathered on the docks to greet the ships were met with a horrifying surprise, Most of the sailors aboard the ships were dead, and those who were still alive were gravely ill. They were overcome with fever, unable to keep food down and delirious from pain. Strangest of all, they were covered in mysterious black boils that oozed blood and pus and gave their illness its name, the “Black Death.”

3. What Happened? • The Black Death is thought to have originated in the arid plains of central Asia, where it then travelled along the Silk Road, reaching the Crimea by 1346. From there, it was most likely carried by Oriental rat fleas living on the black rats that were regular passengers on merchant ships. Spreading throughout the Mediterranean and Europe, the Black Death is estimated to have killed 30–60% of Europe's total population.All in all, the plague reduced the world population from an estimated 450 million down to 350–375 million in the 14th century.

4. Causes • The three plagues associated with the Black Death are now known to be caused by bacteria called Yersinia Pestis, which is carried and spread by fleas on rats. When the rat died after continual bites and replication of the bacteria, the flea survived and moved to other animals or humans.

5. Environmental Concepts • Global temperatures dropped slightly, decreasing agricultural production and causing food shortages, hunger, malnutrition, and weakened immune systems. The human body became very vulnerable to the Black Death, which was caused by three forms of the plague. Bubonic plague, caused by flea bites, was the most common form. The infected would suffer from fever, headaches, nausea, and vomiting.

6. Damage Report • There was 75 million that was killed from the well known disease called the Black death. • Carried by rats and fleas along the Silk Road Caravan routes and Spice trading sea routes, the Black Death reached the Mediterranean Basin in 1347, and was rapidly carried throughout Europe from what was then the center of European trade. Eventually, even areas of European settlement as isolated as Viking settlements in Greenland would be ravaged by the plague. By the time these plagues had run their course in 1351, between 25 and 50% of the population of Europe was dead. An equally high toll was exacted from the populations of Arabia, North Africa, South Asia, and East Asia. This paper will examine the role of trade in the spread of the plague.

7. Laws & Regulations • The relationship between law and disease is historically an indirect one. Due to lack of understanding about how disease was transferred effective quarantine and sanitation regulations would not come about until relative modernity, meaning that infectious diseases were an inevitability instead of something that could be controlled. • Laws in times of plague instead worked to effectively undermine the loss of life and productivity so that rulers could continue to control the populace. In other words, it is how one parasite tightens its control over a host population when threatened by another, smaller parasite.

8. Could this happen again? • They have linked the Black Death, which killed 50 million Europeans in the 1300s, and The Plague of Justinian, which struck 800 years earlier, suggesting they were caused by ‘distinct’ strains of the same pathogen.Dave Wagner, professor in the Center for Microbial Genetics and Genomics at Northern Arizona University warned that it could return in the future.He said 'We know the bacterium Y. Pestis has jumped from rodents into humans throughout history and rodent reservoirs of plague still exist today in many parts of the world.