The effects of the Black Death were significant on Medieval society. The black death caused panic amongst communities and towns leaving unmaintained paddocks and scarce amounts of food. This is due to the plague's rapidly spreading nature, and the fact that many people died. The plague left Europe with a multitude of short and long-term effects and issues. These issues varied from flagellants whipping themselves, from town to town, to make up for sins against God to the loss of labourers to work the land.
The Black Death was a large-scale infectious disease that spread rapidly through Medieval Europe between 1349-1351. The Black Death was a bubonic plague, meaning people would experience egg-sized swellings (buboes) on their necks, armpits and groin. The source of the plague was traced back to the black rat and rat flea. Fleas would bite rats and obtain the bacteria then bite humans, which would cause the bacteria to enter the bloodstream, once in the bloodstream the person would die within three days. The Black Death took the lives of thirty - fifty percent of Medieval Europe. Medieval doctors tried techniques such as bloodletting, a withdrawal of blood from a patient to prevent disease to cure
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The flagellants are people who would voluntarily whip themselves to make amends for their sins against God, they believed that through whipping themselves they would be immune to the black death. This is proven in the source A Flagellants Procession in the Dutch town of Tournai 1349. The source proves that flagellants would punish themselves by whipping themselves with knotted ropes or leather flails with metal spikes. What flagellants didn’t realise is that they were partially to blame for the spread of disease because they were travelling from town to town, spreading the plague. This is again an effect of the black death on peasants, knights, nobles and kings all people who lived in medieval