What is the plague?
The Bubonic Plague is a plague that devestated the Europian population from 1347-1350. It swept through the continent quickly, and only a few small areas were spared. What was left was little, however it might have been for the better. Was it?
Does anyone really know? We do not know the experience, just the facts.
Does anyone really know? We do not know the experience, just the facts.
1300's European Doctors
Doctor with mask
In the mid-1300's, we already know medicene and remidies for the sick were not as advanced as they are today. We know now that the disease is in fleas, and we have a remedy for the victims. But still, it's amazing how inadequently small their knowledge really was. They thought that the disease was a miasma, or a disease in the air. They used leeches to "suck out poisoned blood." That does nothing for your health, it actually drains you of energy, and makes you even weaker. We don't do that at all today. All the doctors could do against the pandemic was tell if the victim had the bubonic plague or not, then gauge how long they were going to live. They were regarded as the White Angels of Death, because they could not save the patient. And they constantly wore bird masks, supposedly to stuff herbs and flowers in the beak against the stench of the dead bodies piled high along the roads,the bodies they could not save and had to let die.
One quote from the famous writer, Boccaccio, was, "...Ate lunch with their friends, and dinner with their ancestors in paradise." This means that the victims were alive for lunch, but were dead by dinner and ate with the dead in heaven. This shows you how quickly the plague could take control of you, and turn things around for the worst.
Did you know?
The people of Europe thought
through a period of time that the
Bubonic plague was caused by
serpents, cosmic dust, and the astrologic
placement of Saturn in the house of Jupiter.
Can you think of anyone who could
come up with such a far-fetched
theory?
The people of Europe thought
through a period of time that the
Bubonic plague was caused by
serpents, cosmic dust, and the astrologic
placement of Saturn in the house of Jupiter.
Can you think of anyone who could
come up with such a far-fetched
theory?