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The Causes And Effects Of The Black Death By Boccaccio

Decent Essays

The Decameron is a frame narrative written by Boccaccio. He is writing about the Plague he witnesses in the city of Florence. The Plague is called the “Black Death” which kills thirty percent of Europe’s population. This story explains how serious this disease is because it shows how men and women fled from Florence to a countryside to prevent from catching it. The disease is carried by flees, unfortunately, there were rats on the ships heading to Europe, the flees would bite the rats and then the flees bite the humans who eventually contracted this disease. These people are not aware of this in this time period and have several different assumptions on what is really causing this outbreak. The uninfected talk about what the Black Death is, the causes of the disease, how contagious this plague is, and the effects it has on their society and their responses to the plague.
In the middle ages people had no idea about how any disease such as the Black Death could spread. The Europeans think “it disseminated by the influence of the celestial bodies, or sent upon them by God in his just wrath” (Boccaccio). In other words, they think the plague came from the sky or sent by God. They think maybe it is God’s way of cleansing the earth or punishing them for their unfair behaviors. Some think that a supernatural origin caused the disease. This disease is a bacterium infection which has a variety of symptoms, such as, nose bleeding, tumors in the groin or armpits and black spots or

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