The Black Plague

An estimated 30%-45% of London’s population died during the Black Plague. 30% is more than how many British soldiers died in WW1. The first and worst wave of the Plague ended in 1350. There are still some cases of the Plague showing up in European countries. The Black Death, over a span of five years, killed 25 million people and it was almost impossible to survive. First, the Plague was just an outbreak of the bubonic plague, which is a disease, created by the bacteria Yersinia Pestis. The first known case of the Black Plague was recorded in China, 224 B.C.E. In 1348, twelve Genoese boats docked at the Sicilian port of Messina, Italy, after they had finished sailing the Black Sea. Rats that lived on the ships spread the Plague to Britain in 1348. After it had been in Britain, traders carried it along the Silk Road. Furthermore, people in these years lived with little hygiene and in unsanitary communities, so the disease spread easily. Next, the symptoms of this disease can be as mild as sweating, or as extreme as growing large, black patches all over the body. The main way a person would become sick is if a rodent with the Plague bit them. In special cases, Yersinia Pestis bacteria would get into the skin if a human had a

It killed 25 million people around the world, including one third of London’s population. In just China alone, it killed five million people. So many people were dying at once that the churches didn’t have enough graves to bury all of the corpses. Dead bodies were lying in the street, and people would see corpses all around their city on a normal day. Churches were forced to dig trenches and bury hundreds of bodies at all. Centuries later, smaller outbreaks of the Plague are still occurring, but the cases aren’t so serious. Some of the outbreaks occurred in Iceland in 1402, Italy in 1629, England in 1665, Austria in 1679, and Russia in