Tell me everything you know about the Black Plague. I want to pool all knowledge; scientific and hearsay on it. It seems like there's no dedicated site to the thing that killed the most human beings in history.
I know that:
>there are four types of plague: bubonic, pnuemonic, septicemic, and enteric. Only Bubonic could be survived.
>supposedly the plague started as an innocent digestive virus in birds. It's when it made its way to rodents, fleas, and finally humans that it became deadly. I don't have the (if any) scientific source on this though.
>Ring a Ring o' Roses nursery rhyme is based on the plague.
>The London Fire of 1666 actually stopped the London Plague of 1665 by burning down infected areas.
>Nostradamus developed a "rose pill" that cured the plague, after an 8-year romp through the country-side after his University closed because of it. He also helped fight against the plague by cleaning the streets after his first wife and children may have died to it.
>Supposedly before an outbreak of the plague, residents reported a black cloaked figure on the outskirts of their village. This tale propagated into the origin of the Grim Reaper.
From wiki, this is a picture is of Yersinia enterocolitica colonies growing on XLD agar plates.
Black plague (Yersinia pestis) belongs to this same family.
The black cloaked figures were real (Jewish).
Truly apocalyptic stuff. If there was anytime in history I would think the End of Days was upon us, it would be during the Black Plague. People think things are bad today but it's nothing compared to then.
Plague columns are pretty
>>1129714
I wonder how bad the plague really was. We read about how terrible it was and how everyone was dying etc. But then at the same time you can read about events from the time that aren't related to the plague, and no mention is made of it, everything seems to be fine.
OP here. According to this, I might be wrong. http://www.cfsph.iastate.edu/Factsheets/pdfs/plague.pdf
Pnuemonic is survivable if treated, but "approaches 100% mortality" if left untreated. Apparently the incertitude of 100% derives from the fact that wildlife within endemic areas are liable to be more resistant than those outside those regions.
Or so the paper seems to imply by noting it in the same paragraph.
>>1129755
are those blobs bubos
>>1129751
I know. I think about this all the time. Like imagine being there. I read on io9 one time a journal account by some famous historian at the time, about how it looked like the dead roamed the streets covered in red blood. I wish I could find the link but the search on the site sucks so much.
>>1129762
It seems like what the Plague didn't cover, the Sweating Sickness did though. Just a skim through Wikipedia, I just learned that Henry VIII's brother died from the Sweat. And his wife's brother-in-law through her sister, William Carey, also did. She contracted it but lived.
What a time to live [spoiler](and die).[/spoiler]
>>1129843
I mean Anne Boleyn, Henry VIII's wife, contracted it. Not her sister Mary.
1349 was the year it came to norway
>>1129714
>the thing that killed the most human beings in history.
I hate to be the fly in the ointment but the Spanish flu killed more people. in fact
>It is said that this flu killed more people in 24 weeks than AIDS has killed in 24 years, more in a year than the Black Death killed in a century.
Black plague actually did a lot of good.
>From the perspective of the survivors, however, the impact was much more benign, for their labor was in higher demand. Hilton has argued that those English peasants who survived found their situation to be much improved. For English peasants the fifteenth century was a golden age of prosperity and new opportunities. Land was plentiful, wages high, and serfdom had all but disappeared. A century later, as population growth resumed, the peasants again faced deprivation and famine.[2][3]
>>1130219
So genociding a large chink of humanity would be beneficial.
>>1130225
Depending on the conditions. In a society like Medieval Europe killing off a large number of peasants increased the scarcity of their labor, allowing them to demand higher wages. But in other areas where serfs and peasants were more like slaves, it had less of an impact. And it wouldn't help today because, at least in the West, we have a service economy and we're also moving towards post-scarcity. That means killing off a large chunk of the population would set us back. So we don't want genocides today.
>>1130271
I said chink not chunk.
>>1130225
Same way forest fires benefit forests. If you actually survive the plague, a lot of your competition is now dead.
>>1130302
>tfw you will never be nourished by the ashes of your brethren
>>1130271
Killing off half of the poor people in Africa and Asia would make things better for the survivors.
>>1130225
We'd be thriving at a population of about 2 billion. But you'd want to get rid of men and women at an equal ratio
>>1130318
It would, yes. But for us to go and kill them would be bad, because we would kill the people we didn't like. Disease, on the other hand, kills rich and poor alike, generally without regard for race, ethnicity, or political affiliation. We can't try to emulate nature.
>>1130332
Getting rid of more women than men would improve the gene pool by making sexual selection harsher.
>>1130341
Disease does discriminate. Well fed people survive more easily, and now the rich have access to better healthcare. Hygiene matters too, which is why Jews were less hurt by the plague.
We could do better.
1233
Pope Gregory IX claims black cats are an incarnation of Satan
Cats are exterminated all over Europe
The Black Plague came from fleas on the rats
No cats means mucho rats means mucho fleas means you're dead
>>1130365
We could do better, but would we? Realistically, would a Western government resist the temptation to kill only the groups that do not support it?
>>1130377
Well, realistically we wouldn't do it all.
And if we did a discriminatory genocide on that scale, I don't think the remaining groups would be so favourable to us.
>>1130377
Why is that a bad thing though?
>>1129714
That plague doctor costume wasn't invented in the 14th century.
>>1129714
>>Ring a Ring o' Roses nursery rhyme is based on the plague.
Also Mary Had a Little Lamb because their fleas were white as snow -- no plague infection
>>1129714
>Ring a Ring o' Roses nursery rhyme is based on the plague.
>Several folklore scholars regard the theory as baseless for several reasons:
>The plague explanation did not appear until the mid-twentieth century.[15]
>The symptoms described do not fit especially well with the Great Plague.[20][23]
>The great variety of forms makes it unlikely that the modern form is the most ancient one, and the words on which the interpretation are based are not found in many of the earliest records of the rhyme (see above).[21][24]
European and 19th-century versions of the rhyme suggest that this "fall" was not a literal falling down, but a curtsy or other form of bending movement that was common in other dramatic singing games.[25]
My local town has a plaque saying that it was where the black death got into England
>>1130617
plague plaques are a diamond dozen
for all intensive purposes, it's probably a fake
has it been authenticated?
>intensive purposes
>diamond dozen
memes OUT
>>1129714
>Warsaw Spared
>>1130441
Because they might kill off local businessmen and politicians that are preventing shitty, exploitative factories from opening up there.
>>1130640
>for all intensive purposes
>>1129714
>so spain is just like a fat italy right?
>yeah pretty much
>>1130695
Poland spared, by and large. Because largely agrarian, and lack of dense population centers. Possibly because relatively isolated from major Euro centers of commerce connected to southeastern trade routes.
>>1130368
Haha. This is the coolest trivia fact of perceivable karma and consequences of ecological disruption I've ever heard.
If true.
>>1130560
Oh wow, that's cool.
Wait a second.... i see through your beguilery anon. You snake.
Basically it began when you had like leemurs or some shit and then they would cough, the germs would get on lice, then the lice would put it into the blood of rats, then it would travel to humans.
Also the "Bubonic" refers to bubles, which were like big lumps you'd get on your groin.
This is facts, m8 I saw it in QI.
>>1130345
How about we get rid of ALL women and make reproduction controlled?
>>1130750
> largely agrarian
As opposed to whom exactly?
>>1131581
>leemurs
What the heck is that?
>>1129714
I heard something about it coming from corpses the mongols threw inside stuff on siege, is there any truth to this?
>>1131613
Yes, during one of the sieges in Crimea. Genoveans then carried the disease to Europe.
>>1131613
I've never heard of the Mongols doing that, but that it originated in Mongolia is the most accepted theory.
>>1131634
Siege of Caffa, 1346
>>1130560
Their fleece was white as snow
>>1131664
Cool, thanks. I spent part of the afternoon reading about it. http://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/8/9/01-0536_article
