Black Plague Impact

Impact of the Plague on Egypt and England The fear of death drives our society’s fixation of safety, and it is reflected in our daily lives. Our world now revolves around this principle, and as our understanding of our surroundings has developed, the emphasis has only grown. Protection is a subtle undertone to many things that we do in our daily lives, such as washing our hands, putting on seat belts, and changing our clothes. We see physicians, vaccinate ourselves, and watch for subtle changes in our body to ensure the longevity of our lives. Safety is a value which has been ingrained in us for millions of years, though measures have been improved drastically over the past two centuries with major scientific discoveries.

It is hard to imagine

Before the plague, the population in Europe was increasing dramatically; however, agriculture was not able to keep up with this. The population in England was slow to recover, especially since the plague would hit European countries again every couple of years (Cropper, 2018).The decreased population allowed agricultural advances to occur independently from population and ultimately decreased famine in these countries. Additionally, many laborers fled London to avoid the plague and other died from illness. This led to a major shortage in laborers, the backbone of the system. During this time, servants began to gain a bit of power because landlords were completely desperate for people to work their land. Therefore, laborers could demand higher pay. Though the end of the Feudal System was a slow process, this played a major role in its demise (Borsch,

This past summer, I had the opportunity to serve people in the jungles of Peru. While they were not completely isolated anymore, many aspects of their life still resemble that of our ancestors. This is very evident in their management of health-issues. When disease or injury presented, little to nothing was done and death was imminent. This became evident on our second day in the jungle when a man was carried four hours through the dense jungle to our camp for medical treatment. He had dropped a large piece of wood on his head which knocked him unconscious and left him with a very long laceration which penetrated down to his skull. They understood that they were powerless against the injury before them and had we not been there that day, he would have surely died from blood loss, infection, and/or brain trauma.

The vitality of proper education about disease became evident to me in this instance. For centuries, humans have made illnesses worse by the way we have dealt with them. I believe that Western society handles disease better than any other time or place in history. In just the last twenty years, giant steps have been made toward destigmatizing mental disorders. This is not to say that we do not have work left to do but only to praise the steps our society has made thus far. How a civilization handles disease and their ill is indicative of both their civility and their confrontation of