Ashes, Ashes, We All Fall Down Essay, Research Paper
Bubonic Plague
I buried with my own hands five of my children in a single grave. No bells. No tears.
This is the end of the world. (Deaux, 1969) These are the words of Italian author Agniol di
Tura, but they reflect the emotions of an entire nation in the 1300 s. It was at that time that
Europe was struck by the hardest blow that a plague would ever swing. The Bubonic Plague hit
Europe with a ferocity that could never have been predicted.
Spread of the Plague Through Europe
The spread of the Bubonic Plague in the fourteenth century happened quickly as a result
of poor living conditions, trade routes and ignorance of the disease. The first reported case of the
plague was in 543 when it hit Constantinople. (Hecker, 1992) This was a minor outbreak and
there were others similar to it, but since no one knew where it came from and so few were dying
from it, no one took the time to find out. But then in 1334, an epidemic struck the northeastern
Chinese province of Hopei that people couldn t ignore. It killed up to 90% of the population-
around 5,000,000 people. (Armstrong, 1981) This caught people s attention, but by then it was
too late.
Sadly, some of the events that aided the rapid spread of the Plague could have been
avoided. In 1347, in the southern Ukraine near the Black Sea, the native people began dying of a
mysterious disease. They suffered from headaches, weakness, and many staggered when they
tried to walk. But most obviously, each carried a common trademark of the plague- they all
began to develop large swellings of the lymph nodes in the groin and underarm areas. Fear and
anger at the disease gave way to accusation. The natives of the area pointed the blame for their
curse at the Italian traders who traveled in and out of their ports. Convinced that they were the
reason for their suffering, the natives attacked the ports. After a week of fighting, the natives
found their soldiers dying of the disease. Hoping to infect the Italians, the natives used catapults
that where normally reserved for large boulders or dead animals to throw dead or dying bodies of
those infected with the plague over the barrier. They succeeded. When the traders fled to Sicily,
they carried the plague with them. (Strayer, 1972)
The plague first arrived in Messina, Sicily in October 1347, but it would not stop there.
Aware of the rate at which the plague would spread, the Sicilian officials tried to contain the
disease by forcing the twelve men on board who were left alive to stay on the ship. But black
rats, which carried fleas that where contaminated with the plague, managed to get off the ship and
enter the city. Within eight months, the plague had spread throughout the island and the rats
which carried the plague had boarded ships that were headed for mainland Italy and the rest of
Europe. (Strayer, 1972) Despite the efforts of city officials, the plague continued to spread. They
had ignored it too long, now it was out of their hands.
The plague spread through port cities quickly because it is transmitted by rat fleas. The
fleas, which spread the plague, would catch the bacteria from a rat who had already acquired the
disease. The bacteria would then completely fills the stomach of the flea, making it so the flea
could no longer digest any blood. It would then be so hungry that it would sucks blood into its
already full stomach, forcing it to regurgitate, thus spreading the bacteria. (Walker, 1992) A
disease that is spread by rats would probably not pose a big problem to most places in the 21st
century, but in the 14th century there were many rats aboard most ships and few people took
notice to them, as they were such a common fixture in the unclean living habits. Because people
were so accustomed to them, these rodents carried the plague from port to port with no one
realizing that they were the accomplice to the disease which was causing the death of millions.
Myths
As a result of the masses that were dying, people would readily accept any explanation of
the cause of the plague as truth. A doctor by the name of Galen had one of the most widely
accepted theories. He said that the plague was spread by miasmas, or poisonous vapors coming
from the swamps which corrupted the air. People were urged to leave low, marshy areas or at
least stay inside their homes, covering their windows. Because people believed that foul smelling
air caused the plague, many walked around carrying bouquets of flowers to their noses, believing
that this would save them from death. (Strayer, 1972) Some thought that the plague could get
into the body through the pores in their skin. As a result of this, many people refused to bath
during the time of the plague, as they felt that washing their bodies would open the pores further,
giving the plague even more opportunity to infect them. Though many people chose to accept
these theories for their surface value and take the precautions suggested, few found solace in them
as they watched those around them die.
Some people felt that the plague had come as a form of punishment from God. A group
of individuals known as the flagellants insisted that it was the sins of man that had compelled God
to punish them. Flagellants could be identified by the scourge that they carried with them. This
was a wooden stick with three or four leather pieces attached, each with an inch long spike of iron
at the end. The flagellants would meet in the center of a town and urge others to join them in
their rituals. Each member would strip from the waist up and then would begin to whip himself
with his scourge. They did this as a form of penance and believed that God would forgive them
and keep the plague from them as long as they showed their remorse. This ritual would occur at
least once a day for three days before the group would move on to the next village where they
would being again, hopefully increasing their numbers ( Biel, 1989). Some who were searching
for answers joined the flagellants, but they soon found that they faced the same destiny as the rest.
Symptoms
The plague had many trademark symptoms, but at first the victim could appear to have a
number of diseased. The first symptoms of the plague include headache, nausea, chill, vomiting,
and aching joints. (Strayer, 1972) These traits are also common to other diseases, but in a plague
infected city, anyone who possessed these traits was considered doomed.
However, soon after contracting the disease, the symptoms would become more obvious.
Within a day or two, the swellings appeared. They were hard, painful, burning lumps on the neck,
under the arm, and also the inner thighs. Soon they turned black, split open, and began to ooze
puss and blood. These swellings, called buboes, gave the disease its name and may have grown to
the size of an orange. (Garrett, 1994) The swellings appeared because once a person became
infected, the bacillus, Yersina pestis, made its way into the lymph nodes. There, it would infect
and destroy cells of the immune system, and in the process, it would also activate a chain of
chemical reactions in which the body would attempt to expel the invaders through pustules and
boils that emerge on the skin. (Garrett, 1994) Once the bobues appeared, the victim would begin
to bleed internally. Blood vessels would break, leaving the blood underneath the skin to run free.
Once dried, the blood would turn black and leave black splotches on the victim s skin. Thus
usually occur within two days after the bobues had appeared. This, often times, was not soon
enough for the victim.
Effects
The Bubonic Plague had a great effect on families, the church, and also the mentality of
society during the middle ages. The death of an estimated 1/3 of the civilized world in the
mid-14th century (Armstrong, 1981) was sure to change every aspect of life for the people living
at that time.
During the plague, there was a general decline in morality, which eventually led to the
church losing most of it s authority. In part, people didn t listen to the church because they didn t
want to hear laws that they knew wouldn t be carried out. But the main reason was that many
lost faith after watching their friends and family die such horrible deaths. The lost faith of the
people can be seen through their art. In many works, instead of heavenly beings calling the dead
to heaven, death was represented as an elderly woman in a black cloak and wild, snake-like hair..
and a scythe to collect her victims. (Strayer, 1983) The rules of the church itself also changed
during the plague. Rome announced an emergency relaxation of canonical law, permitting the
dying to confess aloud to God or to any person who would listen, even a woman . (Deaux,
1969) This was announced because officials of the church were dying off at the same rate as the
rest of the community and people were dying without the Sacrament of Penance.
In the time of the plague, not only was religion tosses aside, but also morality as a whole.
Italian author, Boccaccia, wrote about the mortality of the society in the 14th century.
With so much affliction and misery, all reverence for the laws, both
of God and of man, fell apart and dissolved, because the ministers
and executed of the laws were either dead of ill like everyone else,
or were left with so few officials that they were unable to do their
duties; as a result, everyone was free to do whatever they pleased.
(Biel, 1989)
Many people felt that death was inevitable and therefore decided to spend however many
days they may have left alive the way that would most please them. Many found comfort in going
from tavern from tavern, drinking and much as they wished and listening to and talking only about
pleasant things. Others threw endless parties in their homes and welcomes all who would come.
(Armstrong, 1981) These parties were easy to find because everyone behaved as if they were
going to die soon, so they cared nothing about themselves nor their belongings. As a result,
people lost all sense of responsibility as they felt that all of their belongings and eventually their
lives, as well as the lives of those they cared about, would be taken away from them.
Despair filled the people with the loss of so many that they loved and many of them went
into a state of denial. Such was the distress that an order was passes that would not allow public
announcements of death because the sick could hear them, and the healthy took fright as well as
the sick. (Garret, 1994) In fact, in Florence, it was prohibited to even publish the number of the
dead for fear that the living would lose hope. (Biel, 1989) Even with these precautions, the death
of millions could not be hidden from those that survived it. The smell of the dead fill the air and
there were few people who could not help but give up.
Most people failed to see value in anything but their life. People were so convinced that
they would soon be faced with death, that possessions ment nothing to them. Many times, fear of
the plague would be much greater than the desire for possessions and the houses of the dead, or
sometimes those who were only very sick, would be burned to the ground to prevent the spread
of the disease. (Garret, 1994) Boccaccia said that such was the number of houses full of goods
that had no owner, that it was amazing. Then the heirs to this wealth began to turn up. And
someone who had previously had nothing suddenly found himself rich. (Biel, 1989) Many
houses were left vacant after the owners died because people thought that everything inside was
contaminated with the plague. People felt that their health was of much more importance than
anything that someone could posses.
As a result of the great fear that people had of the plague, many families fell apart.
Boccaccia talk about this in the introduction to his book, The Decameron:
The ordeal had so withered the hearts of men and women that
brother abandoned brother, and the uncle abandoned his nephew
and the sister her brother and many times, wives abandoned their
husbands, and, what is even more incredible and cruel, mother and
fathers abandoned their children and would refuse to visit them.
(Biel, 1989)
The situations that Boccaccia spoke of were not uncommon. Writer Francisco Patriarch
said that may people died of hunger, for when somebody took ill to his bed, the other
occupants in panic told him: I m going for the doctor ; and quietly locked the door
from the outside and didn t come back. (Deaux, 1969) The priorities of everyone
became rearranged as they all feared for their lives. People cared nothing of other
people, they just wanted to live and they did what they had to do to keep their lives.
One Italian writer said that things had reached such a point, that people cared no more
for the death of other people than they did for the death of a goat. (Armstrong, 1981)
Future
With all the advances that the world has made in the past seven centuries, it is
unthinkable that such a disaster could take place again. Rarely in the US do you find a
place where rat and man live so harmoniously with one another. But other parts of the
world are not so fortunate. The most recent outbreak of Bubonic Plague was in India
and it didn t happen a few hundred years ago. It happened in 1994. The problem with
solved with a $30 million loan from the World Bank which they used to relocated 52
villages which the government saw as problem areas . Researchers think that the
outbreak was caused by an earthquake that stirred up the bacilli which can lay dormant
in the soil for two or three decades, but they say that the conditions of the village
favored invasion. Relatively few people died in this recent outbreak thanks to what one
village leaders calls beautiful antibiotics . With five days of oral antibiotic therapy using
a cheap, readily available drug called tetracycline, bubonic plague is 100% curable
(Garret, 1994). Thanks to medical science, the mess in India was cleared up with very
few deaths and the world can be thankful that they will never have to experience life as
millions in the 14th century did.
References
Armstrong, K (1981). The coming of the plague to Italy. New York: Weber
Publishing
Biel, T (1989). The black death. San Diego: Lucent Books.
Deaux, G. (1969). The black death. New York: Weybright and Talley
Ellis, E. & Esler, A. (1997). World history. Upper Saddle River: Prentic-Hall, Inc.
Garrett, L. (1994). Anatomy of a plague. New York: Webb Publishing.
Hecker, J. (1992). Black death ravages Europe. Babington: Bureau of Electronic
Publishing, Inc.
Strayer, J. (1972). Dictionary of the middle ages. New York: Charles Scribner and
Sons
Walker, J. (1992). Famine, drought, and plagues. New York: Glaucestu Press.