Disease and medicine

Le miroir historial, siglo XV. Museo Condé, Chantilly.

The rats

The black plague came from the infection that rats had, caused by the bacterium named Yersinia pestis that lives in animals, especially fleas.

The two most common black plague variants

Biblia de Toggenburg. Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen. 1411.

The bubonic plague

The black plague caused a painful inflammation of the lymph node, which forms blisters in the armpits or between the thighs, as we can see in this picture.

The pneumonic plague

The Plague suffocating a victim. Codice Stiny. Prague University Library 14th c. XIV

In this picture, the Plague is suffocating a victim, which represents the difficulty in breathing of people infected with this variant.

The doctors

Woodcutting of a plague-stricken man lying in bed, attended by three physicians. From the Pestbuch, a 16th Century CE medical treatise by Hieronymous Brunschwig (c. 1450-1512 CE). (Courtesy of the Historical Medical Library of The College of Physicians of Philadelphia)

Without treatment

Despite the doctors not knowing how to treat the disease, they stood by the sick people.

http://catalogue.wellcomelibrary.org/record=b1311796

The famous mask

Here, we can see an example of the doctors famous uniform during the different episodes of the Black Death in the crisis of the Middle Ages and Modern Times. They invented it in order not to be infected by the patients.

The uniform consisted of a long dress, a stick to be able to touch the sick from a distance, glasses and a mask with a very long nose filled with medicinal herbs to, supposedly, avoid contagion.

Venice in 1338, (1892). An illustration from A Short History of the English People, by J R Green, illustrated edition, Volume I, Macmillan and Co, London, New York, 1892. Heritage Images.

The trentine and the quarantine

Doctors did not know how to stop the disease, but in some places quarantine was used to prevent the arrival of sick people in the cities.

Ragusa, Dubrovnik (Croatia) was the first city to approve a pioneering law in 1377 to apply quarantines as a method to avoid contagion.

This law said that all boats and commercial caravans coming from infected areas had to undergo 30 days of isolation before entering the city.

In Venice, the first isolation hospital in history (1423) was established on a small island just off the Lido.

Perugians leaving the city during plague, by Berto di Giovanni di Marco. Cathedral of St Lawrence, Perugia, Umbria.1526.

The escapes

However, it was most common that people fled the cities believing they could avoid the plague, but only succeeded in infecting many more people.

Page updated

Google Sites

Report abuse