Breanna Lizzi
Professor Shanshala
History 101
17 July 2015
The Consequences of the Black Death
The Black Death plagued through Europe for several centuries without the people having a means of fighting the disease off. The Black Death was also known as the bubonic plague. This plague wreaked havoc through the Western world in 1347 (Backman 348). The plague was thought to have been carried into Western Europe by rats brought in on ships from eastern Asia. It is thought that the progression of the disease was due to the violent advance of the Mongol army into Europe (Backman 348). The plague killed over fifty million in an insignificant amount of time. The deaths were due to the people of the Western world having no built up immunity to
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People saw the death from the plague as a paranormal incidence as divine punishment for the people’s sins. People tried every type of remedy, popular cure and prayer, but nothing had any effect on the fast-moving disease. This led to cities burnt down by the townspeople to drive away the rats, but that caused the plague to spread faster (Backman 350). When nothing seemed to work everyone turned on the Catholic Church. Most believed that the church failed them and were not able to save them from this punishment. However, the church suffered from the plague as well. The church lost members of the clergy and priests but couldn’t find any to replace them to meet the high demand. It started to convince people to question the beliefs that the Catholic Church taught to them. The church lost the respect and its influence to the people of Western Europe (Thompson 350). The hysteria from all the chaos made the public find some explanation for the cause of the Black Death. The chaos of the public led to the persecution of the Jews as a scapegoat for the plague. The persecution of the Jews led to the massacre and slaughter all over Europe by the Christian people. Some of the Jewish families jumped into the flames that the Christian’s made to burn them because they believed it would be better to go voluntarily rather than being …show more content…
The doctors were able to begin to understand the disease that was affecting the population (Cohn 708). As the disease progressed, the doctors examined the different aspects of the disease to help identify how to prevent it from returning. It was hard for the doctors to examine the sick without contracting the illness from the patients. The population of Europe acquired the antibodies to prevent the disease from coming back (Cohn 708). The doctors started to catalogue the symptoms and the exacerbations of the plague to further understand it. While the process to understand the plague was long, the doctors found a way to learn ways to treat