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Bubonic Plague During The Renaissance

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The Renaissance was a time period that started around 1300s C.E. and lasted to the 1500s and began in Italy and over time spread to Europe (Frey 316). The renaissance was known for adopting new ideas, the study of humanism, breathtaking art, and the era of deadly diseases that spread rapidly from one person to another and killed people with in days. Although the Renaissance consisted of discovering new and exciting topics, a major outbreak occurred. This outbreak was known as the Bubonic Plague or the “Black Death” which had arrived in Europe in 1348 (Woodville). The Bubonic Plague impacted Europe and negatively economically, politically, and socially. To began the Bubonic Plague affected Europe economically by impacting trade and commerce, …show more content…

Although they planned to stop trading goods they did not and it caused the plague to spread to even more people and cause those people to become very sick and died with in days. Also the plague disrupted trade manufacturing because so many people had died and this caused lots of jobs to open up, and so many jobs opened up with not a lot of people in the region businesses could not get enough people to work for them (Woodville). Frey stated “Trade and commerce slowed almost to a halt during the plague years” (57). Besides trade and commerce being affected by the Bubonic plague, doctors and medicine also had an affect too. When somebody had the plague they had no official way to cure it, but people believed that plague doctors had to come to that person with plagues home and cut open the veins in the victim 's arm and drain all of the bad blood out of their body to stay alive (Dunn 8). Since plague doctors drained their blood it caused people to lose a large quantity of their blood and they would have to find a way to clean their own blood or get new blood which was very dangerous to do. Back then the doctors did not have any technology to help …show more content…

Lastly Europeans were affected by the Bubonic Plague in a social way too for example prejudice, segregation, population, and their daily life. When the plague first broke out in Europe Christians and other people thought the Jews went out and poisoned their water to try to kill them (Macdonald 15). From this thought it caused the Christians to go out and kill and burn thousands of Jews for thinking that they tried to poison them because Christians were “better” than Jews (Woodville). Later on people found out that the plague was not because of the Jews, it was because people were not properly sanitary and their houses and areas they worked in were infested with dirty rats and animals carrying diseases. When Jews were being blamed for supposedly bringing the plague they then moved east to Poland and Russia (Whipps). This caused almost every single Jew to leave Europe and most of the population was wiped out because of the plague, a quarter and a half of Europe 's population had then decreased (Woodville). This did not just happen to Europe, it also happened to places in China, India, and other lands to the east of Europe. Europeans daily life did not help from trying to prevent getting the Bubonic Plague. People were not very sanitary and had lots of rats and invested animals that lived in their homes, and people shared their beds and clothing which caused diseases to spread more rapidly from one person to another (Orent 144). From these actions that Europeans did in their

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