The Black Death is an infectious disease caused by a bacterium called Yersinia pestis that caused a widespread death across Europe and many other places. The Black death was able to spread because it was contained in a flea which was carried by rats who were on merchant ships that went from place to place. In addition, the people around this time did not know about modern medicine and were very unsanitary. Unlike in today’s world where sanitary is must in most parts of the world and we are booming in modern medicine such as antibiotics. Lastly, another difference between now and the medieval times are the reactions to an infectious disease such as the Black Death.
In an article, I found called Plague was written by the World Health Organization it goes into detail about how people react to infectious diseases such as the Black Death into today’s world. According to the article, a few of the new reactions to infectious diseases is prevention, ensuring correct treatment, disinfection, obtaining a specimen, and surveillance. These new countermeasures help reduce the number of people who are infected, lessens public hysteria, prevent mass breakouts, and keeps most of the victims from dying from the infectious disease. These countermeasures also stopped any outrageous acts from occurring. Another countermeasure we have today that we did not have in the medieval times against infectious diseases are modern medicine such as antibiotics and vaccines and reliable doctors to cure the people. Lastly, this article reveals the in modern times people react more logically by either getting treatment done, calling a certain organization, confirming the source of an infectious disease before acting on it, and ensuring the health of workers that are trying to stop the infectious disease from spreading.
In the second article, I found called How to Prevent and Cure the Black Death written by Lillian C.G goes into detail about how people reacted during the medieval time to infectious diseases such as the Black Plague. According to the article, people reacted with fear towards the ones who are diseased or others who could possibly have it. The people during that time also isolated themselves from others, surrounded themselves by nice smells because they believed that the disease was contained in bad smelling air, the wealthy would crush emeralds, blood lettering, tying a live chicken to a dead person’s body, and covering a person’s buboes using items such a treacle. These countermeasures did not help in stopping the spread of the Black Death nor would it help in stopping any other infectious diseases. These countermeasures were less scientific and more religious but they did help lessen people’s hysteria. Lastly, some of the more outrageous action taken due to the Black Death was killing certain races or religious people and putting the blame onto others or things without confirmation.
These two articles are related because they both contain information about the Black Plague and how people reacted to it during their specific time periods. These two articles also relate through some of the countermeasures to the stopping of infectious diseases such as burying the infected, isolation of some sort and cleaning up places. Another reason these two articles relate is that they both concern themselves over how to control the outbreak in some way and the treatment once infected. Lastly, both articles concern themselves with what would happen if an outbreak such as the Black Death appeared in the 21st century.
An issue that arose due to the two articles is a question in which what happens if today’s countermeasures against infectious diseases like the Black death no longer worked. This is becoming a concern because more and more bacterium and other organisms are becoming immune to modern countermeasures due to our overuse of them such as antibiotics. This causes me to worry that we’re reverting back to the medieval times of dealing with outbreaks without modern medicine. For a Minnesotan, this would cause an upset because people would be afraid to contact the outside world just like in medieval times. A Minnesotan would not be able to obtain many resources and our environment would be left untouched due to fear off contracting the disease. Lastly, this would also cause trouble for Minnesotans because our education and advancement would-be put-on hold and the outrageous act would occur such as burning town people’s homes.
History at Normandale 