The Black Death was a plague that swept through Europe in the 1300s that killed somewhere between 30 and 60 percent of their population. It was carried by fleas, which lived on rats, which could easily stow away on ships and be transported from country to country. The disease peaked in Europe between 1348 and 1350.

the black death

There were three types of plague associated with this time period that took hundreds of thousands of lives, and their symptoms varied. If you had been so unfortunate to get the bubonic plague (which was very likely, as it was the most common of the three during the black death), you would first feel general uneasiness. Like that feeling that something is wrong, but you can’t quite place your finger on what. It would soon be followed by nausea, vomiting, headaches, and very painful joint aches. You would develop a fever of somewhere between 101 and 105 degrees Fahrenheit, and likely be dead within eight days. The mortality rate for the bubonic plague was somewhere between 30 and 75%

The second most common had a mortality rate of 90-95% and was known as the Pneumonic plague. There was a bad fever associated with this as well. But its main calling card was a bloody, phlegm-y, cough which became more free flowing and a bright red color the further the disease progressed.

The final and least common of the three plagues of the black death was the septicemic plague. Though it was not as common as the other two, it had a nearly one hundred percent mortality rate and the symptoms associated with it were mainly a high fever and purple patches on the skin due to blood clots and internal bleeding. The septicemic plague wasn’t a coughing, sick-sick, kind of illness, you see. It was a multiple organ failure kind of illness.

There have been modern cases of ‘plague’ as recently as 1995, but nowhere close to the epidemic that it was back then. So far, only one modern case has been resistant to antibiotics. Let us hope that it does not mutate and become as dangerous to us as it was to the people of the medieval times.

May we reconvene under the blood red moon,
-Black Widow