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The Plague Of The Bubonic Plague

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Black Plague DBQ The Bubonic Plague or Black Plague devastated Europe in the fifteenth through eighteenth centuries killing anywhere from twenty to twenty-five million people or about one-third of the continent’s population. At the time, medical knowledge was not competent for understanding why the deadly pathogen was spreading; therefore, the plague radiated like wildfire. The Europeans believed that the plague was a sort of divine punishment for the sins in which they had committed, and they had no idea there was a scientific explanation for the epidemic. Among the masses affected by the calamitous plague, there was a broad spectrum of responses in which the Europeans took part. Three major responses that were most apparent in the …show more content…

The attempts of secluding and quarantining the sick were obviously not very efficient since roughly twenty-five million died; however, the plague might have been much worse and consumed more lives had this response not been widely practiced. In addition to quarantining the large number of infected, another major response to the Black Plague was taking part in efforts to treat and cure them. Due to the extreme lack of medical knowledge, many people turned to religious and superstitious ceremonies in hopes of freeing them and their loved ones from the painful symptoms caused by the plague. It was a common belief that by receiving God’s forgiveness from the person’s sin, it would grant them deliverance from the plague, hence the use of religious ceremonies that had no effect on the outcome of one’s medical health. Another mistaken cause for the plague was the presence of demons in a person. Physicians would then let blood or burst their boils in attempts to cleanse their bodies of their unwanted guests; however, that just made matters worse and caused a quicker decline in the health of the patient. H. de Rochas, a French physician at around the same time, stated another piece of evidence supporting the apparency of treatment of the Black Plague in the era. He explains that patients infected with the plague had toads hung around their necks in hopes that their venom would draw out

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