the black plague essays

the black plague essays The Black Plague was a great European disaster that had many affects of the people living at that time. Though there may be controversy today over its precise significance, no one would to-day deny that the black plague was of the greatest economic and social importance as well as hideously dramatic in its progress. (form the book The Black Death by Phillip Ziegler) In the early 1330s the black plague started to form and the first place it struck was in China. The bubonic plague was basically fleas on rodents such as rats but, fleas can also transmit the disease to people as well as rats but mainly rats that the fleas transmitted this horrible plague into. The spread of the plague started in China very fast since that it was the most over populated country the plague naturally spread very quickly. Since China was the one of the busiest of the worlds trading nations, it was only a matter of time before the plague was spread into western Asia and Europe. In October of 1347, several Italian merchant ships returned from a trip to the Black Sea, one of the key links of trading was with China. Inside the ship there was already people suffering from the deadly virus. Soon when the ship arrives at there location, which is Sicily in Italy. Only within a number of days the disease spread to city and to the countryside. An eyewitness tells what happened and this is what he said: Realizing what a deadly disaster had come to them, the people quickly drove the Italians from their city. But the disease remained, and soon death was everywhere. fathers abandoned their sick sons. Lawyers refused to come and make out wills for the dying. Friars and nuns were left to care for the sick, and monasteries and convents were soon deserted, as they were stricken, too. Bodies were left in empty houses, and ...