Black Death: The Influence Of The Bubonic Plague

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The Black Death, often called the Plague which is now known to be caused by the bacteria Yersina pestis, occurred in vast tracts of Europe and along the Silk Road connecting Asia importantly in the years of 1348-1350 when it is estimated that over Europe’s population was killed. In slaying roughly 20 million people, the plague indiscriminately eradicated noble lineages as well as commoners. With the onset of the plague in medieval Europe, when little or no medical knowledge was at hand alongside over population and famine, chaos was bound to strike. Thus, to a large degree the world and Europe’s histories were altered by the Bubonic Plague by weakening the influence of the church, influencing post plague culture and lifestyles, and affecting…show more content…
The first influence of the plague on the weakening was how many of the sick who were not killed overnight asked clergymen, who themselves often became ill, for answers, and the answers were usually not satisfactory and drove people to look for answers away from the church. Also playing into the church’s weakness was the clergy being drastically reduced in size with certain sects seeing a decrease of one third of the officials. Part of the reason for the exceptionally high mortality rate among the clergy was that they were often requested by the family of a sick person and were in close proximity to more of the sick than any other group. The deaths of many skilled clergymen caused not fully trained members to be cast into their shoes, which again caused much disillusionment amongst the churches followers because the untrained clergy was rarely the same quality of those who had deceased…show more content…
The second of these methods is not often used today and only done in unadvanced cultures, but the first of these methods was used as late as the summer of 2014 in the prevention of spreading an outbreak of the bacteria Yersina pestis. The outbreak caused major parts of the Chinese port city of Yumen to be completely lock downed after a death was attributed to the plague (Kaimen). In the time of the Black Death the quarantine method usually did not work as effectively the modern day equivalent but is viewed as the first instance in which quarantines were heavily used to fight
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