The Black Death

In addition to carrying items of trade from China, the Silk Road and the merchant trade ships carried something else, a disease that became known as "The Black Death". It slowly traveled along the Silk Road person to person in each village and town that the merchants passed through. But in one swift moment in October 1347 it started its attack on Europe at a seaport in Sicily. Twelve merchant ships arrived at port and were greeted by the locals who expected to find new items of trade and new wonders from the Far East. However, they were greeted by ships full of death as the majority of the sailors were already dead and the rest of them very close to it. Despite officials ordering the ships back to sea and away from the port, the destruction was already set into motion. 

The Black Death was an airborne disease, spread very easily by the most minute interaction with someone who was infected. The first people to go on to the ships were probably infected immediately as they attempted to tend to the sick. The sick sailors likely came off the ships looking for medical help and unknowingly spread their illness to many others. In the coming days the citizens went back about their business, unaware of what was brewing inside their bodies. Within 2-3 days the first batch of citizens would have started to have visible symptoms, which usually started with large black boils forming in the armpits and groin regions. The boils oozed blood and pus which when treated by doctors, were another manner in which the disease was spread. This series of events replayed itself over and over for the first few weeks before anyone was aware of what was going on and by then, it was too late. 

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The Black Death was quick for some. It was said that the victims often "ate lunch with their friends and the dinner with their ancestors in paradise. " The airborne version of the disease spread more quickly and was exceptionally more deadly. If infected by fleas or another non-airborne manner, people lived a week or two before succumbing to the disease. Those who were infected by the airborne version, were usually dead within a day. 

Families split up, neighbors avoided each other and some people fled the cities all together to the countryside to avoid the disease. Some were successful in avoiding it, but the disease also spread to farm animals including the sheep population which led to a years long wool shortage at one point. 

The disease actually stopped killing several times each winter as the fleas that carried the disease went dormant during the cold months and limited the spread of the disease. Each spring however, the disease would start right back up as soon as the temperatures climbed back up and the fleas started infecting new victims. 

Eventually, the disease and it's spread was brought under control after about 5 years. However, in that time it managed to kill off between 30-60 percent of the European population depending on what source you wish to believe. The reasons behind this are wide ranging but a simple fact would be that the lack of interaction was limited in people because less people were alive. Entire towns died and those that managed to avoid the death, became extremely isolated from other people. The infected were quarantined eventually, preventing them from interacting with others. New hygiene practices were introduced into the populations as they began to understand what was causing the spread of the disease. Other superstitious practices included burning fires to kill the disease in the air and the smoke may have actually killed off the flea population to an extent. Bodies were burned towards the latter part of the outbreak which also killed off the disease that continued to live inside the victims body. 

The disease has never been as brutal as it was during this age but it continued to pop up occasionally and still does to this day. A better understanding of the science behind the disease has led to better preventative measures to prevent an outbreak from occurring again.