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The Black Death

 

Purplish blotches caused by hemorrhaging under the skin appeared after the buboes. The buboes would sometimes burst and cause blood and pus to ooze out of the sores. "A terrible despair and depression preceded death, as the disease affected the nervous system, and one chronicler claimed that as the victim neared his end death is seen seated on the face'."" Plague victims would suffer severe pain and die within five days of being infected with the disease (Corzine 34). Needless to say, plague victims suffered a horrifying and painful death.
             There were two different forms of the plague. There was the bubonic form and the pneumonic form. Both of these forms occurred during the Black Death (Jordan 90). .
             The bubonic form of the plague was spread when a flea would bite a person therefore infecting the person's bloodstream. After a person was infected, many blood vessels burst beneath the skin and caused boils called buboes. This causes approximately one-half of the victims to die (Jordan 90).
             The other form of the plague called the pneumonic form spreads through the air like a common cold after attacking the lungs. It is one hundred percent deadly and kills every victim that is infected (Jordan 90). .
             The plague hit many countries and cities. Sometime in the late 1320s, the plague erupted in the Gobi Desert and slowly spread across Asia. "Records recounting the southward and eastward movement of the plague are sketchy for that time, but historians believe the plague reached China in 1331- (Corzine 28). Coupled with other natural disasters, the plague killed two-thirds of the population of China between 1331 and 1353. By 1346, the plague had reached westward to Caucasus and Azerbaijan along the coast of the Black Sea (Corzine 29). The plague then quickly infected Holland, the British Isles, Germany, Poland, Russia, and Scandinavia. The plague reached the distant ports of Greenland in 1351, and left them totally deserted (Jordan 90).


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