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The Pneumonic Plague: The Black Death In England

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The Black Death
In 1348 the people of England began dying of a terrible disease named the Great Plague, The Black Death or just the plague. It travelled from China then through the Middle East and reached pandemic level in England in 1348 and in 1349 it started reducing in England but it lasted until 1353 in other places. It eventually killed 32 million people in Britain and Ireland. There was also an outbreak in 1361 and lasted until around 1364. If you caught the bubonic plague you had a 50% chance to live, if you caught the pneumonic plague you had a 10% chance to live and if you caught the septicaemic plague you had a 0% chance to live.

The disease had many different causes, some of which were the Yersinia Pestis bacterium which was …show more content…

They thought it was caused by god, dogs and cats, the alignment of the planets or bad air (bbc.co.uk, 2014). For example, people called flagellants. They believed god was punishing the human race so they whipped themselves so they would already be punished and would not get the plague. Obviously none of these causes were correct and nothing they did worked.

The actual cause of the Black Death was a bacterium named Yersinia Pestis. The bacterium was spread by the Oriental rat flea (Xenopsylla cheopis) infected with the Yersinia pestis bacterium which appears as a dark mass in the gut (Wikipedia, 2016) of the infected rats. The rats then would bite a human and giving the human the bacterium.

Once you caught the Black Death you suffered a very painful death. The symptoms were a high fever, pain, buboes in the armpit, groin and neck from the lymph glands being swollen, difficulty sleeping, weakness, tiredness, increased body temperature, delirium, a red rash on the buboes and bleeding under the skin causing the skin to turn purple or …show more content…

Some were short-term and some were long-term. Some short term effects were less workers to work in the fields and in factories, less government officials, entire towns left abandoned and the economy was ruined. Some long term effects were that the church was less trusted because the priests also died and that `god` wouldn’t spare them, Christians thought that the Jewish had poisoned there wells and had brought the plague and nobles and knights had less people to work for them so they reluctantly gave more money to the peasants which in turn made the peasants richer and the nobles and knights poorer.

Some of the effects of the black plague were horrible, but others were actually quite positive including peasants getting more freedom, women got more and better jobs because their husbands, sons and brothers had died and there were less people to fed, clothe and shelter so the government didn’t have as much work to do.

I think the Black Death had such a big impact because it affected nearly the whole world in a quite short period of time. Although it didn’t last very long it affected around 40% to 50% of Europe`s population. It affected generations of people and every person and family in Europe. From knowing about the plague I hope we learn how to deal with such an outbreak in the

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