Black Plague

“Ring around the rosies, pocket full of posies, achoo achoo, we all fall down!” This may sound like an innocent childrens song, but if you really study the lyrics you will find out that it has a darker and more sinister meaning. The people of Europe were inflicted by one of the most deadly diseases in human history. The Black Plague or Bubonic Plague gave birth to this rhyme, but it is the only thing it gave birth to as it killed about 25 million people between 1348 and 1352. The European economy crashed as the population drastically fell. People would do whatever they could to make sure that their life was taken by the horrendous disease. So many people died while seeing death all around them. The smell, the sights and seeing themselves go through the horrible symptoms of this disease made them suffer until they hoped that they died to make the pain to go away.   This was one of the most horrible events to ever happen to our planet. Lyle Svendsen of The University of Minnesota states that “the English population would take 200 years to recover”. But, what really caused this war of invisible bacteria to invade our human bodies and kill everyone in site? Lets ask the silent assassins themselves.
In November 1347, a ship that had sailed the Black Sea docked in Europe. Not only did the ship dock, but along with it the disease that would kill anybody in its path. The rats on the ship were the original carriers of it and it transferred to humans through the fleas that the rats had. It was highly contagious and humans spread it to each other through contact or air. Symptoms would include a very high fever, vomiting blood and swollen lymph nodes. The swollen lymph nodes that could have been in the neck, arm or throat had a   “blackish coloring that gives the disease its name: The Black Death” (Skip Knox, Boise State University)
The plague was taking lives and crashing European economies. “The massive reduction in the number of people left much land deserted. Landlords...