It was not until centuries later, that people (Europeans) started calling it the Black Death.
Due to the underdeveloped techniques of science and antibiotics, people were not aware of bacteria, viruses and other agents of disease, therefore they thought it was God´s punishment.
The black death reached Europe by sea in October 1347 when 12 Genovese trading ships reached the docks in Messina , part of the Sicilia; the sailors were either dead or gravely ill.
They had similar symptoms to the flu: fever, diarrhoea and confusion provoked by the pain, but one …show more content…
of the most strange symptoms was these black carbuncles that radiated blood and pus, thus the name.
When they authorities arrived there to remove the ships it was already too late, the next five years, this strange disease would wipe out more than 20 million people in Europe, nealy a third of Europe´s population.
http://www.history.com/topics/black-death http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/middle_ages/black_01.shtml Around the 1348, there were rumours of a plague spreeding across Europe, the first great city in Britain that was affected was Bristol due to its dock, the black death came to Britain through south-western England in the summer of 1348 and it hit hard.
Bristol, was at the time, the second largest city in Britain where 10,000 people lived in conditions that were not hygienic with filth running in the streets.
Due to the unhygienic conditions the black plague spreeded more rapidly.
Spread of the Black Death in the British Isles
After the plague infection is introduced in a horse by an infected rat flea, the first human cases of the illness will usually happen between two weeks and 26 days (maximum), the first deaths after 20 to 28 days.
The Black Death arrived in the British Isles, in the little seacoast town of Weymouth in the county of Dorset on the southern coast of England.
Historians do not agree when it was the exact date, they indicate the period of 21 June to 7 July and around the first of August as the time that the presence of the disease became apparent.
John Clyn, an irish friar wrote in his chronicle that the first breakout in Ireland was in Dalkey and Droghech, two small coast towns of the Pale, and people began to die in Dublin at the beginning of August 1348.
From Weymouth, the Black Death spread by great leaps along the west and east coast.
Cornered the Cornish peninsula quickly, moved to the Bristol Channel and spread to the coasts of Sommerset and Devon and in a very short time reached the city of Bristol, it also reached Gloucester, roughly 50 km north of Bristol.
The rains and the many rivers and waterways affected the spread, very
fast.
The Duchy of Cornwall was invaded from Devon at the end of 1348.
From Bristol and Gloucester the Black Death marched north and northwest into the Midland counties and the counties surrounding Wales, and further west into Oxfordshire and along the main road in the direction of London .
It also went along the east coast from Weymouth, and soon crossed from Dorset into the county of Hampshire and Winchester