<h1 style="color:black;">THE BLACK DEATH</h1>

(This article contains gore, reader’s discretion advised)

Only previously once have mankind been brought to its knees, the great flood that wiped out those who were not in the ark. But a great pestilence arose in the 1340’s that almost rivaled the great flood.

200 million people died in Europe and Asia combined, half of Paris’s population of 100,000 people died. In Italy, the population of Florence was reduced from 120,000 in 1338 to 50,000 in 1351, at least 60% of the population of Hamburg and Bremen perished. Before 1350, there were about 170,000 settlements in Germany, and this was reduced by nearly 40,000 by 1450. Mass burial pits were dug as response to the large numbers of dead, the stench, the bones, the decayed flesh mocking our mortality.

The Government was confused, Monks and priests were the most hit as they took care of the sick. A third of European population was already wiped out before Physicians could reflect on the pestilence known as the “black death”.

The black death was caused by a bacteria Yersinia pesitis carried by fleas which found abode on rodents, the plague is thought to have originated in the arid plains of Central Asia, where it travelled along the silk road, reaching Crimea in 1343. The symptoms were gangrene (decaying) of the fingers, swollen lymph glands at the neck, armpit and groin regions that oozed pus and bled when opened.

Renewed religious fervor and fanaticism bloomed in the wake of the “black death”, Jews, beggars, foreigners, pilgrims, lepers were targeted, even individuals with acne (What we normally call pimples) were singled out and exterminated, people turned to astrological forces, earthquakes and poisoning of wells by the jews as cause of the disease, many people believed only God’s anger could produce such horrific displays. There were many attacks against jewish communities, in Feburary 1349, the citizens of Strasbourg murdered 2,000 jews, the jewish communities of Mainz and Cologne were exterminated.

By the end of 1350, the black death subsided, although subsequent outbreaks were recorded. The latest to be recorded is in Madagascar in November 2014.

When next, you go bathing with salt for fear of Ebola, or blaming Davido’s “Bananna fall on you” song for the outbreak of monkey pox, it is fair to say that we haven’t seen anything as compared to the Black Death.


                              By Godsent