The Black Plague (1347-1352) is one of the worst pandemic catastrophes in human history -a deadly plague that ravaged Europe, resulting in the death of an estimated 75 to 200 million people (about one-third of Europe 's population on average), changing forever their social and economic fabric. In the early 14th century, the world population was only about 500 million as a whole before the Black Plague struck. About two-thirds of the victims died within three to four days of developing symptoms. Most of the rest lingered about two weeks and then died. The world population as a whole did not recover to pre-plague levels until the 17th century.
A small number of people were naturally resistant to the plague due to unusual protein structures. The bacteria's enzymes couldn't interact with these proteins easily. This protein structure seemed to be tied to a specific gene. The 0.2% of people who were immune back in the 1300s survived the genetic bottleneck and then passed on this immunity to a significant number of their modern descendants.
The pandemic Black Plague lasted until 1352, but smaller outbreaks continued off-and-on for decades.
For instance, Paris and Rouen had epidemics in 1421, 1432, 1433, and an especially bad outbreak in 1437-39. Between 1453-1504, outbreaks died down dramatically across Europe when food from the New World (Andean Highland products) came into their hands. The last major outbreaks were in the late 17th and early 18th centuries, such as the London outbreaks in 1665 and 1722. After that, cholera, typhoid fever, and tuberculosis were much more significant causes of death, but small outbreaks in Egypt, Syria, Turkey, and Greece have been reported as late as 1845; in Russia as late as 1879; and in Indonesia in 1959.
Some places (like certain islands off the Western coast of Scotland) were completely unaffected. The cities of Genoa and Dublin are more typical cases in which 35% of the population died. In Paris (which was already suffering from an earlier famine), the population fell by 42%. The mortality was even higher in other regions, such as 66% in Caux, Normandy, and 90% in Florence, Italy. In the worst cases, mortality was absolute (100%). For example, over 3,000 villages in France were completely emptied, with the entire population dead or fled. Similar numbers of "ghost towns" were left as shells in other parts of Europe and Britain. In these places, every single person died,and forest grew over the streets. De-populated Europe forgot they ever existed. Many of them not re-discovered until the rise of aerial photographic surveys in the years after World War I (1918).
Most scholars think the Black Plague was a bacterial strain however a minority group of them think that it was actually a mutation of cattle murrain. It is also possible the Black Plague might not have been a single disease but rather a combination of several at once or a series of different ones over many decades.
Today, the Plague is best known as the Bubonic Plague. The name "bubonic"comes from the Latin word "bubo" meaning "a pustule, growth, or swelling." The "bubonic bacteria," carried by a separate species of fleas, can survive indefinitely in its normal host, the European black rat. However, a desperate flea would mistakenly bite a human. Once the human is infected, the plague bacterium can spread for a few weeks by human fleas hopping from person to person and biting them. Once the bacteria have built up in the human body, it evolves into an airborne version "the pneumatic strain" that infiltrates the blood vessels in the lungs, and can be transmitted by airborne water particles from coughs and sneezes. this strain is the one that is truly lethal. In Florence, archaeologists exhuming 15th-century mass graves found a mutant version of the plague. Examining the molecular structure of the strain it shows that the plague strains extant in the 1400s had twice as many protein receptor sites as any known modern strain. It must have been wickedly contagious. In South West of Edin'Burg, exhumed bodies from another mass grave for plague, spores for anthrax were found in the victims' bodies, so a mixture of anthrax and plague might have been running concurrently. That is even worse because anthrax can be transmitted by bodily fluids (saliva, sweat, tears) and by skin contact generally.
Fever, trembling, weakness, and profuse sweating are the initial symptoms of the "Bubonic" version. In the "Pneumatic" version, coughing and parched throats are additional symptoms. In advanced cases, the most distinctive sign is the agonizing rise of dark "buboes"-sensitive black-blue swellings under the armpit and near the groin-spots where dead blood and pus builds up in the lymph nodes. Untreated, the person will died from the buildup of dead blood in these buboes.
The first historical record of the Black Plague is in the dry plains of Central Asia (from Caspian Sea in the West to China in the East and from Afghanistan in the South to Russia in the North) in 1338/39. It reached China and India in 1346, and then it travelled along the Silk Road (network of trade routes that connected the East and West). It infected the Black Sea port of Kaffa by 1347. One legend says that the Mongols infected the city of Kaffa by shooting infected corpses over the walls with catapults. Fleeing ships then carried infected rats to Constantinople, Italy, and Marseilles during the year 1347. In 1348, the disease appeared in England. In 1349, it spread to Scotland. In 1350, it stalked Scandinavia. In 1351, it arrived in Kiev, Ukraine.
The disease hit rural farm workers so labor became scarce, accelerating the demise of the feudal system of government. This ultimately encouraged the rise of the middle class. Trade was affected considerably far worse than the Great Depression in America. Paradoxically, the psychologically effects on the mind of the survivors led them to the desire of social stability in general, even as it gnawed away at the feudal network and at the stability of the church the Plague caused long-term damage to the religious institutions of the time. The Pope declared a worldwide indulgence, allowing the laity to perform funerals. Good priests, who would stick around to administer last rites were likely to contract the disease and thus die themselves. Bad priests would simply run off and hide. A serious shortage of quality priests came along and the religious instruction lowered its standards of theological training and literacy.
Europe did not regain a sense of optimism and hope until the Renaissance of the late 1500s.
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