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European Response To The Black Death Dbq

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The Europeans’ response to the Black Death were extremely varied in many aspects: social, economic, religious, artistic and medical. Two moments need to be analyzed when talking about the people’s response to something, the during and the after. At the very beginning of this chaos, when the plague was just starting to hit Europe, the response was very “medieval”. However, after some time suffering from this horrendous disease, and after it slowed down, Europeans started to view things differently, responding with characteristics of a “Renaissance” outlook. This episode in history served as a rebirth of culture and society.
When the plague was on its way into Europe, the society’s response was not good, and that directly affected the economy. …show more content…

A lot of methods that were proposed to people were very medieval. For example, doctors would tell sick patients to avoid shower, to bleed out until they lost consciousness, (”I have seen people who prophylactically gave up to 8 pounds of blood; most people gave about 5...” document 13, page 58). With a lot of observation (and that is what many doctors did, only observe, so they would not have contact with the plague), doctors started to notice different types of the disease (as one of the chroniclers stated on Document 6, page 32: “And it is said that the plague is of three different types of infection”), and the symptoms as well (“In January 1349, there appeared new symptoms” document 19, page 84). Many doctors were criticized because of their greed, cowardice and impotence. To make money, doctors would visit patients and prescribe their remedies. However those would not work, proving that their art was false. Some doctors even thought of poisoning coming from the Jews could be the reason of the plague.
If the Black Death was good for something, it was medicine. It proved that medieval medicine was a disaster, and consequently there was a complete reform. There was an increase in professionalism and licensed medicine. Doctors started to use more traditional practices (based on actual evidence, and not guesses), rather than empirical observation. This response has also more characteristics of a “Renaissance” outlook because of the new things it brought. Medicine was never the same after the Black Death hit the

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