Bubonic Plague Dbq

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The Bubonic plaque was a bacterial infection spread by fleas who caught the disease from their rat hosts. The disease would then spread from the infected fleas to the people who lived in close proximity to the rats and then spread from person to person through the fleas. However, people back in the 15th and 18th centuries did not know this so they had a variety of beliefs on the causes and cures of the plague. During this time Europe was greatly affected; around 25 million people died. The plague created fear, a desperation to reason through the disease, and a huge impact on social life in Europe. Fear was a key factor in the plague because there was an eminent desperation that was not there before. As H. de Rochas, French physician, The Reform of Medicine, 1647 (Doc. 10), stated “Plague-stricken patients hang around their necks, toads, either dead or alive, whose venom should within a few days draw out the poison of the disease.” The medical field recognized that there was some kind of poison infecting the human body and were searching for a cure. This statement along showed how the everyday man was clawing for a way to be saved from the disease. Another instance of this would be the quote made by Samuel Pepys, English naval bureaucrat, Diary, 1665 (Doc. 13), “For nobody will dare to buy any wig, for fear of infection, that the hair had been cut off the heads of the people dead of the plague.” This quote shows how scared people were to purchase goods because it might have been dealt by those infected or those around others who had been infected. Not only did fear of the plague affect the local commerce, but other countries as well. An example of this would be when author Daniel Defoe, A Journal of the Plague Year, 1772, described international trade by stating “Trading nations of Europe were all afraid of us; no part of France, or Holland, or Spain, or Italy
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