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Essay on The Economic effects of the Plague on England and its Churches in the 14th Century
There were two important forms of the plague. One, the bubonic plague, was characterized by high fever and glandular swelling in the groin and the armpits. Its bacilli developed in black rats and were carried from them to humans by fleas. The other, the pneumonic plaque, was a lung disease transmitted from one person to another by coughing and sneezing. The first catastrophic epidemic of the plague during the late Middle Ages has become known as the Black Death.
It apparently originated in Asia and moved westward along the trade routes, entering Europe in 1347 during a period of inadequate harvests, when the poor had little natural resistance to combat the disease. In three years, the Black Death spread to nearly every country in Christendom, decimating the villages and towns in its path. Such obvious symptoms as gangrenous inflammation of the throat and lungs, violent pains in the chest, vomiting and spitting of blood, pestilential odor from bodies and breath, tumors in the groin, arm pits and the neck, constipation or diarrhea, and purple spots (caused by subcutaneous hemorrhages) marked the victims. Frequent stabs of pain gave rise to the conviction that the stricken were being shot with arrows by some invisible demon.
Most estimates suggest over one-fourth of the population of Europe was wiped out, the losses being heavier among the poor than the rich, the elderly than the young. Some localities suffered severely, others lightly, but after the plague had spent its force around 1350, it returned with almost equal vehemence in 1360-61 and many times thereafter.
As high a percentage of the population lost their lives as is usually predicted if Europe were subjected to nuclear war. When the plague struck a city, it moved rapidly, often taking a proportion of the population equal to that killed at Hiroshima and Nagasaki......
