How Did The Disease Cause The Black Death

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What Disease Really Caused the Black Death? The Black Death was the disease behind the deaths of over Twenty million Europeans during the fourteenth century. The term "The Black Death”, means the specific outbreak of plague that took place in Europe in the mid-14th century. The Black Death came to Europe in October of 1347 AD, spread swiftly through most of Europe by the end of 1349 and on to Scandinavia and Russia in the 1350s AD. The Medieval people had many thoughts on what may have caused this pandemic, most commonly thought was that God was punishing mankind for its sins. Others believed in demonic dogs, Jews of poisoning wells, and in Scandinavia, the superstition of the Pest Maiden was a popular cause. The Scholars attempted a …show more content…
The University of Paris conducted a study, which, after serious investigation, blamed the plague on a combination of earthquakes and astrological forces. To avoid infection masses of people fled the cities in panic, ones who stayed tried everything to prevent infection from smoking tobacco to placing flowers in a facemask to try and disinfect the air. Traditionally, the disease that most scholars believe struck Europe was "Plague”, but other diseases have been postulated by scientists, and some scholars believe that there was a pandemic of several diseases; but currently the theory of Plague still holds among most historians. For the entire Twentieth century it was believed that the Black Death and all the plagues of Europe, during the medieval ages, were epidemics of bubonic plague, but not without dispute, through recent advances in the use of ancient DNA from mass graves in Europe and the increased understanding of Bubonic Plagues symptoms and incubation period. Scholars have narrowed to field to two possible diseases; the Bubonic and the Viral Haemorrhagic Plague. Due to the documentation on the speed and the lethality of this disease at which it spread throughout Europe, a Viral …show more content…
In 1894 a French Microbiologist Alexandre Yersin found that Yersinia pestis, Bubonic Plague, was most likely the cause of the Black Death. He believed this because he found that the bacteria is commensal in many types of wild rodents, but can be transmitted to rats and other rodents by fleas where it results in the disease causing the rats to die and for the fleas to seek a new host, namely humans. Yersinia pestis also is a Gram-negative bacterium. Gram-negative bacteria are resistant to most drugs since they have tri-layered membrane, which consists of an inner membrane, wall, and an outer membrane. These bacteria have built-in abilities to find new ways to be resistant and can pass along genetic materials that allow other bacteria to become drug-resistant as well. With this plague being such a nasty disease Alexandre was sure this was the answer. As the years past though scientists have become wearier of this assumption and as of 2014 the picture is clearer, Professors Haensch S, Bianucci R, Signoli M, Rajerison M, and Schultz M have used ancient DNA (aDNA) from bodies found in mass graves of Black Death casualties. By extracting aDNA from the bones and teeth they were able to test for certain protein chains to see if the Yersinia pestis bacteria were present. They felt that “The most informative
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