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The Horrors of the Black Plague

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The Black Plague was an pandemic never before seen in human history. The modern discovery of the disease later to be known as a bacteria named Yersinia pestis. Between 1347 and 1350, 20,000,000 people or half the population of the civilized world died in Europe from a unstoppable and devastating bacteria. Estimates of between 75 and 200 million people over all. The Black Death shook the middle ages in ways that may never be known only imagined. The way it possibly affected the history of future of arts, music, books, even science with the loss of epic populations is not measurable. Flu symptoms would be a first indicator that you have been infected. Researchers believe it was dormant for hundreds of year before it started up again in the Gobi Desert region of Asia. In 1328 it started moving through the populations of China. High populated and dirty living conditions and areas of the city increased it spread. One third of China’s population was dead and gone before the rest of the world knew what was happening. The Black Plague is spread by fleas on rodents and also airborne. The death rate in China was approximately 7,500 people a day. The Black Plague lasted 50 years in China killing 25 million before moving west through Central Asia. The Mongols are responsible for transferring the bacteria out of China on the trade routes through Central Asia and India to Crimea in Europe. Otherwise known as the Silk Road. The Mongols carried the sickness with them as they traveled and spread it through out India and the Islamic world. When the Mongols fought the Christians of the Caspian to open and take over that trade route, they were losing so many men to the Plague that they catapulted their dead over the city walls. The Black Death was more deadly than their opponents. Catapulting also helped spread the pandemic that they did not understand. This may be the first use of, “germ warfare,” in history. From Caffa Crimea the Plague traveled on trade ships to Sicily. The ships would land at the docks with half the crew dead and the others deathly sick. If you are bitten by an infected flea you would be infected. The Plague starts out with flu like symptoms with a very high fever, vomiting, then swelling in the groin, neck or armpit areas. Then black and purple soars show up in the swelling areas. Lymph nodes would

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