Mystery of Black Death

The Black Death was one of the worst disasters in history.

Nicephoros Gregoras states that the plaque had broken out at the estuary of the R. Don in spring 1346, while Ibn al-Wardi had gathered information to the effect that the epidemic raged in the land of the Golden Horde in October-November 1346.

All plaque is caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis. It was named after the Swiss microbiologist Alexander Yersin, who along with Japanese scientist Shibasaburo Kitasato, finally isolated the bacteria in 1894.

Plague can be passed to a human through the bite of a flea. The bacteria carried by a flea that lives on rodents. When rats lacking any immunity die, the fleas jump to other animals and people sparkling epizootics among the animals and spreading quickly to humans.

In the Old Testament the first Book of Samuel mentions a plague suffered by the Philistines that had as one of its symptoms boils or tumors, which may have been buboes.

An archeologist found an Egyptian medical text called the Ebers Papyrus dating back to 1500 BC. It describes a disease with symptoms including buboes, which modern scientists take to be plague.

The story began somewhere between China and the Crimean Peninsula. Modern theories point to Mongol horsemen disrupting reservoirs of plague-carrying rodents, who entered the stream of commerce and conquest.

The Black Death entered the port city of Messina on the island of Sicily in October 1347. It travelled aboard trade ships en route from the East, where it had decimated populations.

Now it would spread throughout Europe. Over the next years, it quickly spread though England and up into Norway.

Black Death almost killed one-third of Europe’s population between1347-1350. The Black Death killed about 25 million people in Europe alone and probably millions more in Asia. When victims got sick, they developed massive swellings that turned purple and black. Too weak to get out of bed, they began to vomit.
Within two days, they were dead.

People today called the plague ‘the Black Death’ because of the blackened skin of those were infected. But in the years that the disease was active, it was called ‘the Great Mortality’ or simply ‘the end of the world’.
Mystery of Black Death