ipl-logo

Pneumonic Plague Dbq

987 Words4 Pages

The Black Death was a horrific pandemic that killed millions of people across the world, and it affected many nations. It spread across Asia, Europe, and North Africa, infecting millions of people in the process. The plague included three different types of illnesses, depending on which part of the body the disease infected. The cause and spread of the Black Death changed life in Asia, Europe, and North Africa drastically, and it left a lasting mark on the world.
There were a couple of different factors that historians believe contributed to causing the Black Death. Because there was no system of drains or sewers, a dirty environment was formed and bacteria began to grow on fleas. The fleas would attach themselves to rats, and the rats would …show more content…

The bubonic plague consisted of large buboes, swollen lymph nodes, which developed soon after the person was bitten by an infected flea. Doctors realized that they could help their patients by bursting the buboes on their bodies later on, and they saved many people by doing this. The septicemic plague attacked the bloodstream, and it was even more dangerous than the bubonic plague. The toes, fingers, and nose could blacken due to the tissue dying, and the person would commonly go into shock. The pneumonic plague was the least seen, but it was the most dangerous. It infected the lungs, and it could be spread to others through cough droplets (“Plague”). Because these illnesses were so severe, many people lost their lives as a …show more content…

The disease wreaked havoc on the continent for three long years, and it eventually went into Russia (Whipps). Many people believed that the plague was God’s wrath upon man, and they prayed for long hours about this. Due to the danger of trading goods, the economy went through inflation. The prices of goods spiked, and land workers (serfs) were dying very rapidly. This created a huge demand for land workers, and it gave serfs the ability to choose whom they wished to work for (“Social and Economic Effects of the Plague”). With nearly seventy-five million people dead, the plague began to fade out, and large social changes were made as a result. The people who survived the pandemic profited from a shortage of labor. In an effort to keep the serfs on their land to work, the lords increased their living conditions and made their land look more desirable

Open Document