The Black Plague
The Black Death Between 1348 and 1350, The Black Death swept through Europe, causing what is now known as one of the “most devastating pandemics in human history.” This disease was brought into Europe by ships that carried rats that were bit by fleas who carried the disease. The Black Plague caused a tremendous population drop in England, which caused the peasants to revolt in 1381, due to the higher value that had been placed on labor.
I chose this topic because I am very fascinated by the fact that a disease swept out about a third of a population. Since this was not something that people purposely gave each other, it is interesting to know that the people living during this time did not try to protect themselves from this disease. The Black Death proved to be revolutionary in the fact that it revived a whole nation, and changed the way Europeans worked due to the huge decrease of people. As a primary source I used Giovanni Boccaccio’s excerpt The Plague Hits Florence. This is an excerpt from The Decameron, which is a series of stories talking about the disrupted city. Here, Boccaccio illustrates the scene of the plague in 1350 by describing the corpses laying around the town and the “sick folk” being carried out of the Church. This article gives us a good illustration of how the people living during the Plague felt, and their thoughts and emotions at the time. We learn how the people were actually affected by the plague and how difficult it was for them to see all of the people around them rapidly die. Boccaccio’s excerpt gives us a first- hand opinion on how society really was during this time period. As a secondary source I used The Black Death of 1348 to 1350. This article discusses how the Black Death killed about 1.5 million people. It discusses how there was no way to prevent or cure the Plague due to the lack of medical knowledge in Europe during the time. This article was able to give us an illustration of the symptoms; first signs were lumps
Bibliography: Boccaccio, Giovanni. "The Plague Hits Florence." Redirection to Equivalent @ Cengage. 1350. Web. . Trueman, Chris. "The Black Death of 1348 to 1350." History Learning Site. Web. .