The Bubonic Plague: The Black Death Of The Middle Ages

The black death of the middle ages is today known as the bubonic plague. There have been three major outbreaks of the Black Death throughout history; the first outbreak was the Plague of Justinian in the sixth century, which Justinian survived. The second outbreak occurred in the fourteenth century, and killed approximately one-third of the human population at the time. The third outbreak of plague began in the mid-nineteenth century, and remained active until 1959 according to the World Health Organization. The Black Death has always been a real threat to human life on earth, and through the centuries it has killed more humans than any other one source. The Black Death or Bubonic Plague of the fourteenth century was the most devastating
Because very little was known about sanitation and controlling disease in the middle ages, it was logical that the first line of defense against the plague was The Church. Travelling groups of penitent would wander from town to town flagellating themselves in order to appease God, who was obviously angry with the world and this was the response of many religious groups, that later were condemned by The Church. Outsiders and religious minorities were also blamed for the situation, the Jewish population was especially persecuted for the plague. “In August 1349, the Jewish communities of Mainz and Cologne were exterminated. In February of that same year, the citizens of Strasbourg murdered 2,000 Jews. By 1351, 60 major and 150 smaller Jewish communities had been destroyed.” Many cures were also used in the time of The Black Death, all of them useless. Boccaccio states in the Decameron, To the cure of these maladies nor counsel of physicians nor virtue of any medicine appear to avail or profit aught; on the contrary, whether it was that the nature of the infection suffered it not or that the ignorance of the physicians availed not to know whence it arose and consequently took not due measures thereagainst” They would strap chickens to the buboes, drink concoctions made with mercury and arsenic, and carry bouquets of flowers and herbs. What did come out of the plague of the Middle Ages was new health and sanitation measures to help control the spread of the disease. Quarantine was a tool used to combat the disease, and the quarantines usually lasted up to forty days, hence the word quarantine. Hygiene was also implemented during this time, it was common to drink contaminated water, not bath and the bury the dead in mass graves during the Middle Ages; but with necessity being the mother of invention, ways to purify water became the norm in Medieval Europe because of the