(The French biologist Alexandre Yersin discovered this germ at the end of the 19th century.) Today, scientists understand that the Black Death, now known as the plague, is spread by a bacillus called Yersinia pestis. People who were perfectly healthy when they went to bed at night could be dead by morning.ĭid you know? Many scholars think that the nursery rhyme “Ring around the Rosy” was written about the symptoms of the Black Death. The Black Death was terrifyingly, indiscriminately contagious: “the mere touching of the clothes,” wrote Boccaccio, “appeared to itself to communicate the malady to the toucher.” The disease was also terrifyingly efficient. If untreated, the infection can spread to the blood or lungs. The Bubonic Plague attacks the lymphatic system, causing swelling in the lymph nodes. “In men and women alike,” the Italian poet Giovanni Boccaccio wrote, “at the beginning of the malady, certain swellings, either on the groin or under the armpits…waxed to the bigness of a common apple, others to the size of an egg, some more and some less, and these the vulgar named plague-boils.”īlood and pus seeped out of these strange swellings, which were followed by a host of other unpleasant symptoms-fever, chills, vomiting, diarrhea, terrible aches and pains-and then, in short order, death.

Symptoms of the Black PlagueĮuropeans were scarcely equipped for the horrible reality of the Black Death. The plague is thought to have originated in Asia over 2,000 years ago and was likely spread by trading ships, though recent research has indicated the pathogen responsible for the Black Death may have existed in Europe as early as 3000 B.C. Indeed, in the early 1340s, the disease had struck China, India, Persia, Syria and Egypt.

Even before the “death ships” pulled into port at Messina, many Europeans had heard rumors about a “Great Pestilence” that was carving a deadly path across the trade routes of the Near and Far East.

Plague by H.W. &quot;Buzz&quot; Bernard

Plague by H.W. "Buzz" Bernard