...

The
Black
Death
 The Black Death was one of the
deadliest pandemics in human
history, peaking in Europe between
1348 and 1350. It is widely thought
to have been an outbreak of bubonic
plague caused by the bacterium
Yesinia pestis, but this view has
recently been challenged.
Usually thought to have started in
Central Asia, it had reached the
Crimea by 1346 and from there,
probably carried by fleas residing
on the black rats that were
regular passengers on merchant
ships, it spread throughout the
Mediterranean and Europe.
 The Black Death is
estimated to have killed
30% to 60% of Europe's
population, reducing the
world's population from
an estimated 450 million
to between 350 and
375 million in 1400.
 This has been seen as
creating a series of
religious, social and
economic upheavals which
had profound effects on the
course of European history.
 It took 150 years for
Europe's population to
recover. The plague
returned at various
times, resulting in a
larger number of deaths,
until it left Europe in the
19th century.
The Black Death is categorized into
three specific types of plague:
bubonic plague (infection in the
lymph nodes, or [hence] buboes),
pneumonic plague (the infection in
the lungs), and septicemic plague
(the infection in the blood and the
most deadly of the three).
 Scientists and historians at the
beginning of the 20th century
assumed that the Black Death was
an outbreak of the same diseases,
caused by the bacteriumYersinia
pestis and spread by fleas which
primarily made use of highly
mobile small animal populations
like that of the black rat (Rattus
rattus).
 Once infected by the Yersinia
pestis bacterium, it is
estimated that victims would
die within three to seven days.
However, this view has recently
been questioned by some
scientists and historians,
 and some researchers,
examining historical records
of the spread of disease,
believe that the illness was,
in fact, a viral hemorrhagic
fever.
Some historians believe the
pandemic began in China or
Central Asia (one such
location is Lake Issyk Kul) in
the lungs of the bobac
variety of marmot, spreading
to fleas, to rats, and
eventually to humans.
 In the late 1320s or 1330s,
merchants and soldiers carried
it over the caravan routes until
in 1346 it reached the Crimea in
South Eastern Europe. Other
scholars believe the plague was
endemic in that area.
In either case, from Crimea the
plague spread to Western
Europe and North Africa
during the 1340s.The total
number of deaths worldwide
is estimated at 75 million
people, approximately 25–
50 million of which occurred
in Europe
The Black Death is estimated
to have killed 30% to 60% of
Europe's population. It may
have reduced the world's
population from an
estimated 450 million to
between 350 and 375 million
in 1400.
The plague is thought to
have returned every
generation with varying
virulence and mortality
until the 1700s. During
this period, more than
100 plague epidemics
swept across Europe.
On its return in 1603, the
plague killed
38,000 Londoners. Other
notable 17th-century
outbreaks were the Italian
Plague of 1629–1631, and
the Great Plague of Seville
(1647–1652), the Great
Plague of London (1665–
1666)
and the Great Plague of Vienna (1679).
There is some controversy over the
identity of the disease, but in its virulent
form, after the Great Plague of Marseille
in 1720–1722, the Great Plague of 1738
(which hit eastern Europe), and the
Russian plague of 1770-1772, it seems to
have disappeared from Europe during the
19th century.
The 14th-century eruption of the Black Death
had a drastic effect on Europe's population,
irrevocably changing the social structure. It
was, arguably, a serious blow to the Catholic
Church, and resulted in widespread
persecution of minorities such as Jews,
foreigners, beggars, and lepers. The
uncertainty of daily survival has been seen
as creating a general mood of morbidity,
influencing people to "live for the moment",
as illustrated by Giovanni Boccaccio in The
Decameron (1353).
 ...
Naming
Medieval people called the
catastrophe of the 14th
century either the "Great
Pestilence"' or the "Great
Plague".
Writers contemporary to the plague referred
to the event as the "Great Mortality".
Swedish and Danish chronicles of the 16th
century described the events as "black" for
the first time—not to describe the late-
stage sign of the disease, in which the
sufferer's skin would blacken due to
subepidermal haemorrhages (purpura), and
the extremities would darken with
gangrene (acral necrosis).
However, the term is more likely
to refer to black in the sense of
glum, lugubrious, or dreadful as
to denote the terribleness and
gloom of the events.
The German physician and
medical writer Justus Hecker
took that idea when he
described the catastrophe in
1832
in his publication "Der schwarze
Tod im vierzehnten Jahrhundert".
The work was translated into
English the following year, and
under the influence of the cholera
epidemic of that time,
"The Black Death in the 14th
century" gained widespread
attention which coined the
term Schwarzer Tod and Black
Death in the German and
English speaking worlds
respectively.