Part two of the Black Death; this is lecture
23.
Let’s talk about types first of all.
The Bubonic here, the bacteria attacks the
lungs, the heart, the kidneys.
It also attacks the nervous system, giving
rise to the phrase “the dance of death”
and you can Google this and see medieval depictions
of this dance macabre.
In the Bubonic variety, in most cases the
victim then hemorrhages massive amounts of
blood which cause dark blotches to appear
before slipping into a coma and dying.
So if you look at these images you’ll see
that the body begins to turn a purplish color
and then black as the victim gives way to
death.
A second variety is the pneumonic, and you
can tell how this is spread from the root
here – think of pneumonia.
It’s nearly always fatal.
Death from asphyxiation occurs within two
to four days, and of course, it’s spread
by airborne droplets as people cough and sneeze.
And then finally is the septicemic; this is
the rarest form of plague.
Here the bacteria enter the bloodstream directly.
It is always fatal.
Death occurs within hours and there are often
no accompanying symptoms.
So I guess with the Bubonic plague you have
a chance of survival.
Those chances diminish dramatically with the
pneumonic, and then are entirely absent with
septicemic.
I guess if you get septicemic after breakfast
you can cancel dinner.
Let’s talk about transmission here.
When a flea bites a plague-infected rodent,
its esophagus becomes blocked by plague bacteria.
This blockage makes it impossible for the
flea to eat.
The flea eventually dies but not before it
vainly attempts to feed on the black rat,
or some other warm-blooded host.
If the flea happens upon a human it bites
into the flesh, but rather than swallowing
a piece of human skin it succeeds only in
regurgitating massive amounts of plague bacteria
into the superficial wound.
Thus, the bacteria is spread.
The plague’s route – according to William
McNeill’s Plagues and Peoples – the Mongols
established trade routes that passed through
the areas in Central Asia where the plague
resided within the fleas.
From there, traders and their flea-infested
cargos carried the infection east to China,
west to the Black Sea ports, where ships carried
the Black Death back to Sicily; Egypt; and
Italy.
Now let’s think about some remedies here,
and these are remedies that I have read about
pertaining to Europe that were probably used
elsewhere, but these are specifically European.
One remedy was simply to flee, to get out
of the city, to get away from people, to seek
isolation.
If you get a chance you may get to read Boccaccio’s
Decameron – that means ‘the one hundred’;
here people flee I think it’s Florence,
they get out of the city, retreat to the woods,
they gather and tell stories to amuse each
other as they await death.
Another remedy goes under the term, or the
rubric I suppose, aromatics.
Here we use herbs or flowers to try to fight
of the stench of the plague.
The premise, of course, is that it’s the
stench of the rotting bodies that causes you
to get sick.
So if we could mask that stench with something
that smells good, like rose petals or thyme
and rosemary, perhaps we can avoid death.
You guys probably remember the nursery rhyme
when you were kids about ‘Ring around the
Rosie’; this is directly from the days of
the plague.
Aromatics, let’s continue – the source
of death is the stench of the plague, so if
you buy into this theory we could fight off
the stench with something that smells good
– or theoretically we could combat the stench
with something that smells even worse.
So we have reports of people bathing in their
own urine.
We have reports of people dipping their clothes
in latrines and then wearing them, hoping
that the stench of human waste would be sufficient
to fight off the stench of the rotting bodies.
Incense – another aromatic remedy – or
preventative at least.
You should avoid strenuous exercise.
It’s believed that an overheated body is
susceptible to the plague.
So sex and certain types of work are to be
avoided.
Another remedy is to purge the body.
Purging through diarrhea and through vomiting,
and of course, a few days of this remedy will
kill you from dehydration – so here, the
remedy being equally as bad as the malady.
Bloodletting, of course, is a common remedy
for virtually everything – the idea that
extracting blood from the body may take the
evil from the body as well.
Smoke is used on occasion.
Again, smoke creates a mask that may prevent
the stench of the plague from reaching you.
Of course, and this is often successful.
I believe it was used in the Vatican in the
pope’s chambers.
It was successful – not for the reasons
they believed.
The simple fact is that fleas don’t like
smoke.
Now there’s another remedy called the flagellants;
this is – the French verb ‘flagel’ is
to whip, and if you want to see a good depiction
of this you can look at Ingmar Bergman’s
classic film The Seventh Seal, where the flagellants
are depicted very effectively.
Groups of flagellants would whip themselves
in acts of atonement.
They’d wear a crown of thorns.
They’d carry crosses.
They were welcomed by villagers as they sort
of paraded from one village to the next.
Villagers regarded them as saint-like because
of their willingness to punish themselves
by either whipping themselves or by whipping
the person in front of them as the person
behind you whips you on the back.
A contemporary description, quote –“Each
whip consisted of a stick with three knotted
thongs hanging from the end.
Two pieces of needle-sharp metal were run
through the center of these knots from both
sides, forming a cross, the ends of which
extended beyond the knots by less than an
inch.
Using these whips, they beat and whipped their
bare skin until their bodies were bruised
and swollen and blood rained down, splattering
the walls nearby.
I have seen sometimes those bits of metal
penetrated the flesh so deeply that it took
more than two attempts to pull them out.”
¬¬– unquote.
So the flagellants believed that God has brought
this plague upon mankind.
He’s wiped out the world before – you
may remember Noah’s flood – and so the
purpose here is to demonstrate to God that
we are punishing ourselves, and that this
public penance should convince God not to
punish us further with the Black Death.
Think about the social consequences of this
calamity.
Priests refused to administer the last rites.
This of course, lessens peoples’ faith in
the church as apparently the priest has no
more faith than the rest of us.
Doctors refused to visit the houses of the
dying, and of course, medieval medicine is
nothing to get excited about.
But nevertheless, again, medical institutions
are now held in – or at least the respect
for them has been diminished.
We have dead bodies in waterways and streets
and houses.
Houses are abandoned because of the corpses
and the stench.
Bodies are dumped in the streets.
Bodies are dumped in waterways.
You can imagine the impact this has on people
downriver.
Bodies are consumed in the streets by pigs
and by dogs, birds.
Whole villages, whole families, wiped out
quickly; people seek isolation, not consolation,
so the plague doesn’t bring people together.
And then we have famine on top of the plague
because there’s a shortage of agricultural
workers to bring in the harvest, and of course,
if the harvest is not successfully brought
in, people starve.
There are no restaurants.
There are no drive-throughs.
And then of course, we have a breakdown in
law and order as well.
The attitude seems to be – let’s eat and
drink and be merry because we’re all going
to be dead in two weeks anyway, so who cares?
Let’s look at some of the big consequences
of the Black Death.
One, I’ve heard historians make the argument
that the Black Death is a long-term cause
of the Protestant Reformation because it lessens
peoples’ faith in the institution of the
Catholic Church.
Death and destruction are now manifest in
art and literature, and you can Google this
on your own and take a look, and you can look
at some of the images we provided you, where
death becomes central in art.
The Black Death is going to contribute to
the breakdown of the feudal system in Europe.
The feudal system with its strict hierarchy
of classes is going to be shaken up by this
catastrophe.
It’s going to allow a little wiggle room,
a little flexibility here, so that the peasantry
is perhaps not stuck in that lowest class.
It creates more movement in this hierarchy,
and thus weakens the feudal system.
Of course, the Black Death is going to wreck
Mongol trade in Central Asia that we talked
about last time, and this of course, weakens
Mongol rule.
And of course, it weakens the human web as
civilizations have to take time to re-establish
connections and re-establish those links broken
by the Black Death.
So that’s the end of our second lecture
on the Bubonic plague.
Thanks for your attention.
