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Black death

 

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             There have been many disputes over what caused the Black Death, but only one is supported with the most evidence. It is thought that on October of 1347, a Genoese fleet made its way into a harbor in northeast Sicily with a crew that had "sickness clinging to their very bones" (Gottfried xiii). .
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             The sickness this crew had was not brought by men, but the rats and fleas aboard the ship. The harbor tried to control the sickness by attempting to quarantine the fleet, but it was too late (Gottfried xiii). Within six months of the docking of that very fleet, half of the region had either fled the country, or died. That fleet, along with many other fleets along the Mediterranean Sea brought the greatest natural disaster to the world (Gottfried xiii). .
             The infested rat, called the black ship rat, was carried in the baggage of merchants on board the ships traveling all over the Mediterranean (Norwich 30). They didn't know it, but it was the people that actually spread the disease across the land. The plague spread in a great arc across Europe, starting in the east in the Mediterranean Sea, and ending up in northwest Germany (Strayer and Munro 462). It is incredible that the plague hit Europe several times, but still no one understood neither the causes nor the treatments of the epidemic (Strayer and Munro 462). .
             There was another cause that some people strongly believed brought the disease into their world. Doctors at the University of Paris claimed that on March 20, 1345, at one o'clock in the afternoon, a conjunction of three higher planets Saturn, Jupiter, and Mars caused a corruption of the surrounding air, which made the air become poisonous or toxic (Gottfried 110). This is a highly unlikely theory unless you are coming from a basis of Astrology. .
             Another explanation of the plague that scientists gave was environmental factors. These scientists thought that there were many earthquakes that caused toxic fumes to come from the center of the earth (Gottfried 110), which, again, brought contaminated air for the people.


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