The Plague: The Black Death In Europe
The black death first came to Messina in Italy in 1347 when a few Genoese trading ships docked at the Sicilian port. People gathered at the port to greet the travelers, but they were met with an unfortunate surprise. Most of the fleet’s ship's crew was dead, however, the people who were alive were seriously ill and eventually died. The most unusual thing of all, they were covered in huge black boils. The disease spread throughout Europe and killed nearly one third of Europe's population over the next three years.This made many people start thinking about what it could be caused by and how to treat it.The Black Death was one the most devastating pandemics in human history it began in south west Asia and spread to Europe by the late 1340s there
…show more content…
For the people who could afford it, they would be treated by a medical physician whom would have been trained at a university. But this didn't mean that there treatments were effective. most people would have seen a barber, a barber surgeon or a wise woman about treatments. A barber would perform dental or bloodletting procedures. A barber surgeon could perform a wide range of procedures. A wise woman would treat the poor people or people who couldn't get to a barbershop. Art was influenced by the plague. With drawings called danse macabre depicted the cause of Black Death as people being taken away by skeletons. With an analysis of primary and secondary sources, the cures for the Black Death were very unusual. for instance, “bloodletting was believed to cure illness and prevent diseases such as the Black Death.leeches were sometimes used to suck out blood; or a person's vein was cut and a set volume of blood was collected in a dish” (oxford big ideas history 8: Australian curriculum pg 316). Some of the most unusual cures were; drinking rotten treacle, living in a sewer, eating a spoonful crushed emeralds, washing yourself with urine, rubbing yourself with a living chicken, letting a leech suck your blood, smelling herbs and spices (aromatherapy) etc. lots of these cures are absurd but some of them like aromatherapy and leech therapy are still used today. Pope Clement VI had the ideas to sit between two large flames. This proved effective as the flames cleansed the air and stopped the yersinia pestis from spreading. There were a lot of unusual and unhelpful cures for the Black Death in medieval
For the people who could afford it, they would be treated by a medical physician whom would have been trained at a university. But this didn't mean that there treatments were effective. most people would have seen a barber, a barber surgeon or a wise woman about treatments. A barber would perform dental or bloodletting procedures. A barber surgeon could perform a wide range of procedures. A wise woman would treat the poor people or people who couldn't get to a barbershop. Art was influenced by the plague. With drawings called danse macabre depicted the cause of Black Death as people being taken away by skeletons. With an analysis of primary and secondary sources, the cures for the Black Death were very unusual. for instance, “bloodletting was believed to cure illness and prevent diseases such as the Black Death.leeches were sometimes used to suck out blood; or a person's vein was cut and a set volume of blood was collected in a dish” (oxford big ideas history 8: Australian curriculum pg 316). Some of the most unusual cures were; drinking rotten treacle, living in a sewer, eating a spoonful crushed emeralds, washing yourself with urine, rubbing yourself with a living chicken, letting a leech suck your blood, smelling herbs and spices (aromatherapy) etc. lots of these cures are absurd but some of them like aromatherapy and leech therapy are still used today. Pope Clement VI had the ideas to sit between two large flames. This proved effective as the flames cleansed the air and stopped the yersinia pestis from spreading. There were a lot of unusual and unhelpful cures for the Black Death in medieval