→ Preface
There have been countless outbreaks of plague and disease in human history, and the most mysterious death toll is nothing more than a plague that has ravaged the entire Eurasian continent and northern Africa. The plague, dubbed the Black Death, turned Europe into a cemetery and claimed the lives of some 25 million Europeans, a third of Europe's population at the time.
So where did this plague come from, and how did it eventually disappear?
→ the origin and severity of the Black Death
Today we know that the Black Death was a plague bacillus carried by rodents and other rodents, according to the data show that the Black Death really originated from Mongolian gerbils, and the earliest infected with this disease were Mongolian warriors.
At that time, Mongolia was fighting against the Black Sea port city of Kafa, and due to the tight defense of Kafa and the impact of the plague on the Mongol army, the Mongol army was greatly depleted. So the Mongol army came up with an evil idea, they threw the plague-stricken corpses into the city with catapults, so that the city of Kaffa could not be destroyed by the plague.
But when the city is broken, the disease will not disappear. The Italians returned home after the fall of Kaffa, and the Black Death virus lurking on them was brought back to Constantinople and then traveled along the route to various Parts of Italy and French ports.
At that time, Europe was not as developed and civilized as it is now, and the interior of the city was full of dirt and smelled worse than the garbage cans. Such living conditions are very harsh for human beings, but for infectious diseases, it seems to have come to heaven.
So the contagious and strong plague caused by black rats spread rapidly from Italy, then spread to Western Europe, Northern Europe, and finally to Russia, killing people along the way, and mourning outside the city and outside the city.
Especially in the densely populated Florence, it has become the hardest hit area of the plague. At that time, the Italian writer Boccaccio recorded in his "Decameron" that as a witness, he witnessed the passage of the city of Florence from a literary paradise to a hell on earth.
Countless people died of the Black Death at that time, and more than 80% of Florence's population was infected with the virus. People infected with the virus can take their lives in as little as a few hours and as long as a week. Therefore, at that time, patients who suddenly fell to the ground and died could be seen on the street at any time. Some people are frightened to stay at home, but in fact, it is not safe, and some patients who live alone are basically found for several days after death until they emit the smell of corpses. The body trucks on the street pulled the bodies out of the city day and night. The bustling streets soon became empty dead towns, and only stray cats and dogs survived by nibbling on corpses.
The Black Death was menacing and contagious, and the people of that time wrote a big "P" in white lime on the outer wall of the house with the Black Death, and these people who were infected with the Black Death virus all died, and even those who wrote the mark later died.
This method quickly spread and was used as the Black Death spread. Suddenly, almost the entire neighborhood of the major european cities was seen on the façade with the word "P" written on it.
→ the journey of the death spread of the Black Death
The great plague began in September 1347 when the Crusaders returned to Italy and landed in the port city of Messina in Sicily. The first case that appeared at that time did not attract attention. Then the plague of the Black Death began to cross the ocean, spread all the way to the Mediterranean port town of Marseille in France, and then jumped all the way to the northern Italian city of Genoa, spreading extremely quickly, and when people reacted, the plague could not be controlled.
Two months later, Venice and Pisa in Italy had a large number of patients at the same time. Subsequently, the Black Death plague virus once again attacked the Italian Lorenzo with lightning speed, and then quickly occupied the entire Italian country by water and land.
The virus that entered the port of Marseille in France was not far behind, and the raging virus swept through all the obstacles from Provence to Normandy, and finally began to conquer Paris in August 1348.
In the summer of 1348, the Plague of the Black Death invaded England from the port of Dorset, and in August occupied London, quickly conquering all of Great Britain.
In 1349, the virus crossed the Rhine river to Frankfurt, Cologne and other cities in Germany, and eventually all of Germany fell. This tireless plague army did not stop their attack for a moment. The plague then began an expedition to northern and eastern Europe, eventually reaching Russia in 1353.
→. The pathogens and sources of transmission of the Black Death
At that time, people thought that cats and dogs were the source of transmission, so they were beaten to death and thrown on the street, not knowing that the real culprit rats were even more unscrupulous after the absence of natural enemies.
Compared with the current level of medicine, the medicine at that time could not be called medicine at all. Most of the medical practitioners are not full-time doctors, they include hairdressers and some teenagers, and even the owner of the spice shop gives medicine to patients. And the patients at that time did not believe in the hospital, they preferred to go to church to confess. They believe that only prayer and repentance can cure the disease, so the defense against infectious diseases is like a joke, even less vulnerable than a piece of paper.
There are also some doctors who want to find the source of the disease by cutting the corpse, but in the end they find nothing. But because of the ignorance of the pathology of the Black Death, the method used was of course ineffective. In the end, most of the doctors died of contact with patients, and the remaining doctors fled, and even those who did not flee were afraid to close their doors.
On the contrary, it is those barbers and teenagers who take on the responsibility of doctors to diagnose and save people, and their main treatment method is only to bleed patients, but they did not expect to cure many people.
It was not until the nineteenth century, when the plague virus spread to Southeast Asia, that the microbiologist Yersin entered the epidemic area and found the deadly source of the Black Death, the plague bacillus, by dissecting the corpse. It has been learned that the bacteria are transmitted through flea bites and sneezing by infected people.
Fleas on rodents such as black rats start biting people again after sucking the blood of animals infected with plague, and then transmitting the virus to humans. After all, the medical level at that time was limited, and people had no ability to cope with the prevention and treatment of the Black Death, and the menacing virus did not give people time to prepare and breathe. At that time, the only way was to prevent and isolate the epidemic area, and lock people infected with the virus in the house and not allow them to go out.
Fearing the virus, Venice has refused to shore ships from the epidemic area, requiring sailors to quarantine on board for more than 40 days before they can go ashore. Although the ship and the people were under control, the rats on the ship were unrestrained, they carried the Black Death virus, and they ran from the ship to the land of Venice, and soon the water city of Venice also fell.
→ the cause of the disappearance of the Black Death
It can be said that the Black Death at that time was like entering no man's land, and those who were physically inferior were quickly eliminated by infection and death, and the remaining small number of people with strong resistance survived. Then these people who survived the infection also gained immunity and antibodies, and the overall anti-infection rate of humans continued to rise, and the virus slowly disappeared because it lost the basis of rampant infection.
Of course, severe quarantine measures were a powerful means of extinction of the Black Death. After the outbreak of this plague, the various countries worked closely together. At that time, strict regional isolation measures were implemented between countries and villages. Patients, people, and goods were quarantined, and finally under the unremitting isolation system, human beings finally came out of the shadow of the Black Death.
→ the impact of the Black Death on European society
The Black Death virus, which once ravaged all of Europe, was by no means a simple direct impact that led to casualties, but directly changed the structure of European society. Because of the death of the Black Death, which led to a serious shortage of labor in the entire European society at that time, the overall scale of trade and the level of productivity of the society were seriously reduced, and because of the death of most people, the wealth of the society began to be redistributed, and the wealth gap in Europe began to grow.
epilogue
In fact, the Black Death is the plague, which is a fierce infectious disease caused by the Plague Yersinia. The disease has not disappeared, and it mainly occurs in the northwest pastoral areas and around the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau in China. Plague is a naturally pathogenic disease that is mostly endemic among rats before it is endemic in humans. Rat fleas are the vector of transmission in the form of rodent-rat fleas-rodents (humans). The population is generally susceptible to the disease, and long-lasting immunity can be obtained after the disease.
However, everyone does not have to worry, today's medical conditions and medical level are not the same as the original, as long as the timely and active treatment will basically not lead to death.