Black death

BLACK DEATH1347-1351

BY:HAMS YASSERYEAR 7

CONTENT• What is the Black Death• Naming of the Black Death• Spreading of the Black Death• Migration of the Black Death• Symptoms• Consequences of the Black Death• Important events

WHAT IS THE BLACK DEATH The Black Death was one of the most

devastating pandemics in human history, It was first struck Europe in the mid-14th century (1347–50), killing about a third of Europe's population, an estimated 34 million people. It probably killed 30-50% of the population of England.

NAMING OF THE BLACK DEATH• Medieval people called the catastrophe of

the 14th century either the "Great Pestilence"' or the "Great Plague“. Writers contemporary to the plague referred to the event as the "Great Mortality". Swedish and Danish chronicles of the 16th century described the events as "black" for the first time

• Because of a striking symptom of the disease, in which sufferers' skin would blacken due to hemorrhages under the skin it was called “The Black Death”

Migration during the

black death

Populations in crisis

• In Europe, the Medieval Warm Period ended sometime towards the end of the 13th century, bringing the "Little Ice Age” and harsher winters with reduced harvests. In northern Europe, new technological innovations such as the heavy plough and the three-field system were not as effective in clearing new fields for harvest as they had been in the Mediterranean because the north had poor clay soil, and the potato, otherwise ideal for Northern Europe, was an American crop unknown in Europe at the time.

CONT…. Food shortages and rapidly inflating prices were a

fact of life for as much as a century before the plague. Wheat, oats, hay and consequently livestock were all in short supply. Their scarcity resulted in malnutrition, which increases susceptibility to infections due to weakened immunity. Consistently high fertility rates, at five or more children per woman throughout Europe, resulted in high population growth rates and contributed to food shortages. In the autumn of 1314, heavy rains began to fall, followed by several years of cold and wet winters.

The already weak harvests of the north suffered and the seven-year famine ensued. In the years 1315 to 1317, a catastrophic famine, known as the Great Famine, struck much of northwest Europe. It was arguably the worst in European history, reducing the population by perhaps more than 10 percent.

Infection and migration• The plague disease, generally

thought to be caused by Yersinia pasties, is enzootic (commonly present) in populations of fleas carried by ground rodents, including marmots, in various areas including Central Asia, Kurdistan, Western Asia, Northern India and Uganda.

CONT….• In October 2010, medical geneticists

suggested that all three of the great waves of the plague originated in China. In China, the 13th century Mongol conquest caused a decline in farming and trading. However, economic recovery had been observed in the beginning of the 14th century. In the 1330s a high frequency of natural disasters and plagues led to widespread famine, starting in 1331, with a deadly plague arriving soon after.

SPREAD OF BLACK DEATH THROUGH EUROPE

European outbreak• There appear to have been several

introductions into Europe. It reached Sicily in October 1347 carried by twelve Genoese galleys, where it rapidly spread all over the island.

• Galleys from Caffa reached Genoa and Venice in January 1348, but it was the outbreak in Pisa a few weeks later that was the entry point to northern Italy.

• Towards the end of January, one of the galleys expelled from Italy arrived in Marseille.

CONT…

• From Italy, the disease spread northwest across Europe, striking France, Spain, Portugal and England by June 1348, then turned and spread east through Germany and Scandinavia from 1348–50.

• Finally it spread to north-western Russia in 1351. The plague spared some parts of Europe, including the Kingdom of Poland and isolated parts of Belgium and the Netherlands

Symptoms

SYMPTOMS• Contemporary accounts of the plague are

often varied or imprecise. The most commonly noted symptom was the appearance of buboes in the groin, the neck and armpits, which oozed pus and bled when opened.

• Other symptoms were fever, vomiting, sneezing and coughing

• The lucky people died in a day or 2 ,others suffered for 5 to 6 days or maybe more

CAUSING OF THE BLACK DEATH

Causes of the black death

• In 1894, during an outbreak of disease in Hong Kong and India known as the Third Pandemic, bacteriologists Alexander Yersin and Shibasaburo Kitasato, working independently of each other, identified the bacteria that caused plague.

• This bacterium came to be called Yersinia pestis, when Yersin showed it to be the causative agent of the plague in India.

• Working backwards, Yersin determined that plague was the cause of the Black Death as well, due to the medieval records of large tumours.

CONT….• Yersinia Pasties is usually transmitted from rodent

to flea to rodent. Humans are normally only targeted by fleas when there are no rodents left. When a flea bites a healthy rodent, the blood from the rodent goes directly to the flea's stomach, easing hunger.

• But when a flea bites a rodent infected with Y. Pasties, the bacterium-riddled blood gets stuck in the flea's foregut. The bacteria will grow, engorging the flea.

• The flea constantly feels hungry because nothing

is getting to its stomach. In response to hunger pangs, the flea feeds greedily on more rodents. It spreads the disease by regurgitating the infected blood into healthy rodents. When the rats start to die off, fleas swarm the remaining rodents. Finally, when all the rats have died, the fleas turn to people.

WHAT PEOPLE THOUGHTPeople in medieval England had no idea

about germs. They had their own explanations…..• Some people thought it was an act of God

and their whole life was punished

• Some people thought it was a curse if an evil spirit

• Others blamed the poor and Jews as they thought that they poisoned them

CONSEQUENCEES OF THE BLACK DEATH

Death tollIn the time of the black death too many people died. Actually half of the population of England died….

• It took the king and rich people time to release that it could effect them too till Princess Joan , the daughter of the king died

SURVIVORS

In the Black Death too many people died which actually made life better for the survivors in different ways…

• Before the Black Death poor people were forced to do everything without anything in return but after the black death they could ask for extra wages and better treatment

• It speeded up the break down of the feudal system which was introduced by King William I and peasants had more freedom

Cont…

After that came Wat Tyler and people which made revolts and too many events happened and it led up to peasants revolt which was ended and the poor people became under the control of the lords again….

IMPORTANT EVENTSBLACK DEATH

Summer 1348 Plague travels the south of England.

September 1348 Plague hits London

January 1349 Parliament decided to stop meeting

Spring 1349 Plague spreads into east Anglia, coast, whales and midlands

Summer 1349 Plague hits North and Ireland

1349 The scots raid Durham while England is weak

1350 The plague hits Scotland and eases of in London

1361---1405 Plague comes back

1520s Population started to rise again

Black death

Education

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