The Black Death Epidemic: How Humankind Managed to Defeat the Plague and whether it has receded forever

The common flea, a tiny, barely visible insect, was the cause of terrible disasters that struck mankind. But no one knew about it, and they waited with fear for the arrival of an invisible deadly disease.

The first plague epidemic

The plague turned a healthy person into a skinned skeleton in two or three days. A flea, stuffed with the most dangerous bacteria, was capable of infecting up to a hundred people a day. Bubonic, septicaemic disease ravaged towns, villages and hamlets.

In the Middle Ages, the first sign of this terrible disease was a black rash on the body. That’s why the plague was called the Black Death.

Three campaigns of ominous and elusive disease remained in the history of mankind the most tragic events with terrible consequences. 541 A.D. was marked by the fact that gave the start of the pandemic. Justinian plague for two centuries destroyed about a hundred million people and almost turned Europe into a desolate desert. The Old World lost half of its inhabitants.

The plague is back

The Black Death, having taken a short pause, in the XIV century again began to mercilessly kill people. Now its mourning list included up to 200 million people. For two decades, the plague passed through almost every country in the world, leaving mountains of corpses. Rats were rampant in the devastated cities. And the survivors, hidden in their homes, could hear the nasty squeaks.

The third devastating plague pandemic began in China and raged from 1855 to 1960. It killed more than 10 million people. This fact gave reason to some scientists to say that the black death has already lost its destructive power.

However, the disease has an insidious property to appear where no one expects it. And China, for example, is still a risk zone where the black death lurks.

Where did it come from?

Note that for many centuries, doctors have been struggling to solve the riddle of the nature of the origin of the plague. And for a long time used the treatises of Hippocrates and Aristotle. The authority of ancient thinkers was so strong that rarely anyone had the courage to challenge some of the points of these works.

Hippocrates saw the cause of fatal disease in the inappropriate lifestyle of man. Aristotle advanced a theory about the miasmas that cause the plague. They say that poisonous fumes from the local marshes, odors of manure – a breeding ground for the origin of the deadly disease.

Already in the Middle Ages, when there was a certain scientific progress, doctors were still treading on the ground. In a medical treatise of 1365 it was said in all seriousness that plague cannot be cured if one is not familiar with astrology and the theory of humors. The following can be said about the latter.

It turns out that the balance of four fluids – blood, lymph, yellow bile and black bile – determines human health. At least, this is what the scientific minds believed.

Medieval medics did not even talk about human anatomy and physiology. The autopsy of a corpse that died of plague was considered, according to the churchmen, a terrible crime. Therefore, ignorance flourished, which could not stop the pandemic, but only contributed to it. It was absurd. For example, doctors would pierce and cauterize a patient’s buboes containing plague poison.

in the hope that it would alleviate his condition. But the doctors had no idea that their actions had unleashed deadly bacteria. And realizing the futility of treatment, the doctors fled to remote villages with their families. Alas, the black death was inexorably following in their footsteps.

The disease was transmitted with incredible speed. It was buried in the holds of ships, in the goods they carried, in the clothing of merchants and travelers. And the infected fleas were at ease everywhere. Unfortunately, world trade unwittingly became a carrier of plague.

The devastating march of the Black Death was accompanied by the migration of rodents. They gathered in whole colonies to find their shelter near humans.

This was partly to people’s delight. For example, gopher meat was very valued, which was considered a gourmet meal. And there is a definite opinion that this harmless-looking animal caused another outbreak of bubonic plague.

By then, scientists were too late to discover that fleas, ticks and rodents carried the deadly disease. However, it would later turn out that the disease is also transmitted by airborne droplets.

Plague in Russia

And yet it is worth recognizing: it was infected gophers, living in Mongolia in immeasurable numbers, gave rise to the second pandemic of plague in the history of mankind. It will happen in 1320. In 30 years the wave of pestilence will reach Russia. One of the surviving chronicles will say:

…The disease was like this. At first it was as if a slingshot would strike under the shoulder blade, or against the heart, under the chest, or between the shoulders. And the man becomes sick, and begins to cough blood, and fire begins to burn, and then sweat, and then trembling begins, and so, having lain in sickness, he dies. Some died after one day of sickness, and others after two days, and others after three days.

The black death spared neither the poor nor the rich. But the misfortune forced people to bury themselves in their homes. And not to communicate with anyone until the plague leaves their favorite places. Forced quarantine, the idea of which belongs to the Venetians, played a saving role here. People survived without facing the terrible disease.

Treatment and vaccines

History knows isolated cases when in the Middle Ages still prevailed over the black death. For example, Michel de Notredam – the great Nostradamus – advised the sick to drink only pure spring water and be more often in the fresh air. In addition, he prepared decoctions of healing herbs, with the help of which he saved the lives of dozens of people. Sadly, Nostradamus’ wife and two children would die of the plague.

It was only in the XIX century that it was possible to fight back the black death. The invention of the great Louis Pasteur will put an end to pseudoscientific views on the cause of its occurrence. The founder of microbiology would prove that any infectious disease is caused by microorganisms. This contributed to a change in the approach to the treatment of plague.

Vladimir Khavkin, a famous Russian and French bacteriologist, immunologist and epidemiologist, was the first to create a vaccine in the early 20th century. He took plague bacilli killed by high temperature to create it. However, the first to test a live vaccine was Soviet bacteriologist Magdalina Pokrovskaya. The courageous scientist dared to show the efficacy of the life-saving vaccine she had created.

But only 13 years later, in 1947, the vaccine was effectively used to treat plague in Manchuria. Then Soviet doctors used the invention of American scientist Zelman Waxman – his streptomycin cured hundreds of people during the plague outbreak.

Although we now think of the plague as a distant dream, impossible to live, in some African countries the plague is recorded every year.