The Black Death

Historically, the consensus has been that the plague was carried to Europe from Asia, chiefly in trading vessels and cargoes infested with rats that had germ-laden fleas on their bodies. Rodent/flea contact with humans plus human/human contact triggdred the epidemic. Fourteenth-century consensus was that the plague was either airborne, a "miasma," or seaborne, via merchant ships coming from China. Medical interventios proceeded from that cause, though modern epidemiology understands the bacterial origin of the epidemic, aggravated by unsanitary living conditions in Europe.

Year-by-year infections have been connected to trade routes originating in the Gobi Desert, controlled by the Mongols and intersecting Constantinople as early as the 1320s. In December 1347, it traveled from there to southern Italy and into France and across the Mediterranean to North Africa. From June 1348 to December 1350, it progressed north through Continental Europe and to England, as far north as Scandinavia and as far south as northern Africa. Even in the modern period trade caravans, messengers, and armies belonging to the Mongol empire were thought to have brought it to the Black Sea by 1346 and Italian traders thence to Constantinople in early 1347. By 1351,

. . .
Some common words found in the essay are:
England Europe, Asian Russia, Europe Records, Europe Asia, Switzerland Jews, , Europe England, Middle Ages, China Medical, Indeed Cantor, black death, consensus plague, bubonic plague,
Approximate Word count = 881
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page)

More Essays on The Black Death