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Home/ 7th Grade Research 2014/ Contents contributed and discussions participated by Jacob Morrison

Contents contributed and discussions participated by Jacob Morrison

Jacob Morrison

The Black Death of 1348 to 1350 - 2 views

  • Written evidence from the time indicates that nearly all the victims died within three days though a small number did last for four days.
  • Therefore whole villages would have faced starvation. Towns and cities would have faced food shortages as the villages that surrounded them could not provide them with enough food. Those lords who lost their manpower to the disease, turned to sheep farming as this required less people to work on the land. Grain farming became less popular – this, again, kept towns and cities short of such basics as bread. One consequence of the Black Death was inflation – the price of food went up creating more hardship for the poor. In some parts of England, food prices went up by four times.
  • Those who survived the Black Death believed that there was something special about them – almost as if God had protected them. Therefore, they took the opportunity offered by the disease to improve their lifestyle.
Jacob Morrison

Plague, Plague Information, Black Death Facts, News, Photos -- National Geographic - 2 views

  • Bubonic plague, the disease's most common form, refers to telltale buboes—painfully swollen lymph nodes—that appear around the groin, armpit, or neck. Septicemic plague, which spreads in the bloodstream, comes either via fleas or from contact with plague-infected body matter. Pneumonic plague, the most infectious type, is an advanced stage of bubonic plague when the disease starts being passed directly, person to person, through airborne droplets coughed from the lungs. If left untreated, bubonic plague kills about 50 percent of those it infects. The other two forms are almost invariably fatal without antibiotics.Yersinia pestis is extraordinarily virulent, even when compared with closely related bacteria. This is because it's a mutant variety, handicapped both by not being able to survive outside the animals it infects and by an inability to penetrate and hide in its host's body cells. To compensate, Y. pestis needs strength in numbers and the ability to disable its victim's immune system. It does this by injecting toxins into defense cells such as macrophages that are tasked with detecting bacterial infections. Once these cells are knocked out, the bacteria can multiply unhindered.Victims are so overwhelmed that they're more or less poisoned to death as the bacilli gather in thick clots under the skin, where a passing flea might pick them up. Other grim side effects can include gangrene, erupting pus-filled glands, and lungs that literally dissolve.
  • Plague still exists in various parts of the world. In 2003, more than 2,100 human cases and 180 deaths were recorded, nearly all of them in Africa. The last reported serious outbreak was in 2006 in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in Central Africa, when at least 50 people died. The United States, China, India, Vietnam, and Mongolia are among the other countries that have confirmed human plague cases in recent years.Most people survive if they're given the correct antibiotics in time. Good sanitation and pest control help prevent plague outbreaks since they need crowded, dirty, rat-infested conditions to really get going.There are fears that plague bacteria possibly could be used for a bioterror attack if released in aerosol form.
Jacob Morrison

Cures for the Black Death - 0 views

  • Vinegar and water treatment If a person gets the disease, they must be put to bed. They should be washed with vinegar and rose water
  • Lancing the buboes The swellings associated with the Black Death should be cut open to allow the disease to leave the body. A mixture of tree resin, roots of white lilies and dried human excrement should be applied to the places where the body has been cut open.
  • Bleeding The disease must be in the blood. The veins leading to the heart should be cut open. This will allow the disease to leave the body. An ointment made of clay and violets should be applied to the place where the cuts have been made.
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  • Diet We should not eat food that goes off easily and smells badly such as meat, cheese and fish. Instead we should eat bread, fruit and vegetables
  • Sanitation The streets should be cleaned of all human and animal waste. It should be taken by a cart to a field outside of the village and burnt. All bodies should be buried in deep pits outside of the village and their clothes should also be burnt.
  • Pestilence medicine Roast the shells of newly laid eggs. Ground the roasted shells into a powder. Chop up the leaves and petals of  marigold flowers. Put the egg shells and marigolds into a pot of good ale. Add treacle and warm over a fire. The patient should drink this mixture every morning and night.
  • Witchcraft Place a live hen next to the swelling to draw out the pestilence from the body. To aid recovery you should drink a glass of your own urine twice a day.
Jacob Morrison

plague -- Britannica School - 0 views

    • Jacob Morrison
       
      Caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis, plague is an infectious disease that occurs mainly in rodents, such as rats and squirrels. It can be transmitted from rodents to humans by the bite of a flea from an infected animal. Plague was the cause of some of the most-devastating epidemics in history, including the Black Death of the 14th century.
Jacob Morrison

Debating Death and Disease: Student Research Center - powered by EBSCOhost - 0 views

    • Jacob Morrison
       
      Intriguingly, just as the Black Death had a significant impact on European society, so its study has had a major impact on medieval historiography, leading to a series of dramatic debates, in particular over the identity of the disease. The debate was largely sparked by Samuel Cohn, who threw doubt on the long-held belief that the cause of the Black Death was bubonic plague in The Black Death Transformed: Disease and Culture in Early Renaissance Europe (2002). In 2010 DNA analysis by an international team of scientists identified Yersinia pestis, the pathogen responsible for plague, in medieval burial sites in five European countries (see the online article, S. Haensch, R. Bianucci, et al, 'Distinct clones of Yersinia pestis caused by the Black Death' These findings have now been absorbed by the historical community, as can be seen in articles in the recent volume edited by Linda Clark and Carole Radcliffe, 'Society in an Age of Plague' in The Fifteenth Century, XII (2013), but it has been questioned how far these very local findings can be generalized - and so the debate continues.
Jacob Morrison

The Black Death: The Greatest Catastrophe Ever - 0 views

    • Jacob Morrison
       
      All the citizens did little else except to carry dead bodies to be buried [...] At every church they dug deep pits down to the water-table; and thus those who were poor who died during the night were bundled up quickly and thrown into the pit. In the morning when a large number of bodies were found in the pit, they took some earth and shoveled it down on top of them; and later others were placed on top of them and then another layer of earth, just as one makes lasagna with layers of pasta and cheese.
Jacob Morrison

Epidemics of the Past: Bubonic Plague | FactMonster.com - 1 views

  • The origin of “The Black Death” dates to an outbreak in China during the 1330s
  • Unlike smallpox, the plague is still a threat in some parts of the world. Yersinia pestis, the bacterium that causes bubonic plague, is transmitted through rat-tainted fleabites in densely populated cities and in countries with poor hygiene, or in the open country from infected wild rodents. The most common form of human plague is a swollen and painful lymph gland that forms buboes.
  • Pneumonic plague is more difficult to treat, and even with antibiotics, victims can die from it. Pneumonic plague occurs when the infectious bacteria infects the lungs. The first signs of illness in pneumonic plague are fever, headache, weakness, and a cough that produces blood or watery sputum. The pneumonia progresses over two to four days and, without early treatment, death ensues.
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  • Plague vaccines have been used since the late nineteenth century, but their effectiveness is uncertain. Vaccination reduces the incidence and severity of disease resulting from the bite of infected fleas, but it isn't 100 percent effective. The plague vaccine is licensed for use in the United States and is available for adults at high risk—people who live in the western United States, people who will be in parts of the world where plague is still endemic, and people who are around rodents. Severe inflammatory reactions are common, and plague vaccine should not be given to anyone with a known hypersensitivity to beef protein, soya, casein, or phenol. Finally, the vaccination routine is complex and requires frequent boosters to maintain its effectiveness.
  • Bubonic Plague
Jacob Morrison

Black Death -- Britannica School - 1 views

  • Plague is an infectious fever that takes three forms in humans: bubonic; pneumonic, and septicemic. The bubonic type is the mildest, accounting today for virtually no deaths and in the past killing about half of its victims. It is named for one of the disease’s characteristics, the formation of buboes, or inflamed lymph glands. Pneumonic plague attacks the lungs and is often fatal in three or four days without treatment. In septicemic plague, bacteria overwhelm the bloodstream and often cause death within 24 hours, before other symptoms have a chance to develop. It is believed that the Black Death was a combination of bubonic and pneumonic plague. The pandemic was called the Black Death because of the black spots that appeared on the skin of many victims.
Jacob Morrison

The Black Death: Bubonic Plague - 4 views

  • The Black Death: Bubonic Plague In the early 1330s an outbreak of deadly bubonic plague occurred in China. The bubonic plague mainly affects rodents, but fleas can transmit the disease to people. Once people are infected, they infect others very rapidly. Plague causes fever and a painful swelling of the lymph glands called buboes, which is how it gets its name. The disease also causes spots on the skin that are red at first and then turn black.
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