John Camarella

Artifact #2

Historical Aspects:

The Black Plague is probably the most famous disease due to its historical documentation and grand effects. Although it is most associated with the epidemic that occurred between the late 1300s to early 1700s, it is also believed to go as far back as being present around the Peloponnesian Wars (Powerpoint Slides). During these early epidemics of the Plague, society was intact allowing for control to an extent. With the collapse of the Golden Age in Europe, society was in shambles and medicine was based on old techniques that were over hundreds of years old. People lived in squalor with little to no sanitation methods that had been present during the times of the Greeks and Romans. In conjunction with this, the Mongols were becoming a new threat to the Western world. The Mongols had been carrying this disease across the Asian continent and understood a basic idea that putting those that were suffering from a disease around those that were healthy would cause the disease to spread. When attacking cities and areas, they would take their dead who probably were carrying the disease and catapult them in (Film). Thus, adding another method of infection.

Society being limited at the time would blame reflective of the culture. Anyone that was not liked was blamed for bringing the disease into the area. The ethnic groups that were the blame of the town were driven out due to fear that they were conspiring against the natives (Film). The leading medical theory at the time was miasma or the belief that disease was present only where places smelled bad. In short, bad air was to blame for contracting a disease and that if one were to fill his or her area with natural decent smelling aromas, the disease would not enter the person. For example, the romanticized plague mask that many doctors used would stuff the long beak-like extension with rosemary or flowers in order to have healthy aromas when around infected patients (Film).

During this time period where the Plague was eliminating about one-third of the population of Europe, the church saw for the first time that their power was lessening. They could not save people from the disease and priests were beginning to no longer perform last rites for the dying for fear of becoming sick themselves (Film). Since the Christian faith was at the center of everything where people would commonly go to church every day now would be following extremists in hopes to end the disease sooner (Film). A huge shift in the culture that does not stand out but marks how many deaths resulted from the Plague was the halting of church bells ringing at funerals. Until cities and parishes began to halt this practice, the bell would toll all day reminding people just how poor the situation was (Film). Due to the belief that the Jews were to blame for the disease in some way or another, they were driven out of many populated parts of Europe. They would eventually settle in Poland (Film).

Plague today:

Today, on average only seven cases a year occur of the Plague in the United States. It is usually contracted when doing outdoor activities in areas that are known to be natural reservoirs for the disease. Such places include northern New Mexico, northern Arizona, and southern Colorado (Powerpoint Slides). It is in these places that scientists are pretty confident that the bacteria that causes the Plague circulates at low rates within the populations of rodents in the areas that were listed above allowing the bacteria to survive long-term (Powerpoint Slide). Today, scientists believe that the plague is spread from these animals to humans through fleas that are commonly around these rodents. Once bitten, the disease can become airborne through the respiratory droplets from the infected human (Powerpoint Slides).

The most recent outbreak of the Plague occurred in Madagascar in 2009. Here, many factors contributed to the easy spread of the disease such as many in poverty, little health care available, low hygiene, and overcrowding of living spaces (Powerpoint Slides). This allowed for carriers of the disease such as rats to become common within the city and due to poverty levels, people were living in close proximity with them giving the possibility of disease transfer from enzootic to the epidemic possibility (Powerpoint Slides). Health officials believe that once the disease broke out, the practice of intimate interactions with the dead contributed to the vast spread of the disease. Protocol for the dead would be to bury them as quickly as possible in order to prevent the spread of the disease due to its ability to continue to be contagious. In Madagascar, families would retrieve their family members who had succumbed to the Plague in order to give them proper burial practices in accordance to that village. With the body being still contagious, this allowed for all those in attendance at this rituals to possibly become infected (Powerpoint Slides).