The work of William McNeill “Plague and People” is an attempt to explain the past through a sort of biological means. It is in some way an explanation of historical event by taking a look at the influence of nature. McNeill is a naturalist and that he considers the environment as a big factor in history. It’s a naturalistic approach to the study of history. If we examine closely the work of McNeill, we might be able to get the idea that human beings and the history of humans is in a way related to the environment and that we play a role.
The Black Death is one example of how a civilization or a society can be swept away by an epidemic. If McNeill’s argument is correct, a certain society will adapt to it but certain parts of the population will definitely be gone. It had caused millions of death. The Black Death seems to have arisen somewhere in Asia and was brought to Europe from the Genoese trading station of Kaffa in the Crimea (in the Black Sea). The story goes that the Mongols were besieging Kaffa when a sickness broke out among their forces and compelled them to abandon the siege. The Mongol commander loaded a few of the sick dead onto his catapults and hurled them into the town. Some of the merchants left Kaffa for Constantinople as soon as the Mongols had departed, and they carried the plague with them. It spread from Constantinople along the trade routes, causing tremendous mortality along the way.
The disease was transmitted primarily by fleas and rats. The stomachs of the fleas were infected with bacteria known as Y. Pestis. The bacteria would block the "throat" of an infected flea so that no blood could reach its stomach, and it grew ravenous since it was starving to death. It would attempt to suck up blood from its victim, only to transfer it back into its prey's bloodstreams. The blood it injected back, however, was now mixed with Y. Pestis. Infected fleas infected rats in this fashion, and the other fleas infesting those rats were soon infected by their host's blood. They then spread the disease to other rats, from which other fleas were infected, and so on. As their rodent hosts died out, the fleas migrated to the bodies of humans and infected them in the same fashion as they had the rats, and so the plague spread. The disease appeared in three forms:bubonic [infection of the lymph system -- 60% fatal]; pneumonic which can be through a respiratory infection -- about 100% fatal], and septicaemic which the infection of the blood and probably 100% fatal].
The plague lasted in each area only about a year, but a third of a district's population would die during that period. People tried to protect themselves by carrying little bags filled with crushed herbs and flowers over their noses, but to little effect. Those individuals infected with bubonic would experience great swellings ("bubos" in the Latin of the times) of their lymph glands and take to their beds. Those with septicaemic would die quickly, before any obvious symptoms had appeared. Those with respiratory also died quickly, but not before developing evident symptoms: a sudden fever that turned the face a dark rose color, a sudden attack of sneezing, followed by coughing, coughing up blood, and death. The disease finally played out in Scandinavia in about 1351but another wave of the disease came in 1365 and several times after that until -- for some unknown reason -- the Black Death weakened and was replaced by waves of typhoid fever, typhus, or cholera. Europe continued to experience regular waves of such mortality until the mid-19th century.
What did the society do the control the plague and how has it affected the population? The effects of that plague and its successors on the men and women of medieval Europe were profound: new attitudes toward death, the value of life, and of one's self. It kindled a growth of class conflict, a loss of respect for the Church, and the emergence of a new pietism (personal spirituality) that profoundly altered European attitudes toward religion. Still another effect, however, was to kindle a new cultural vigor in Europe, one in which the national languages, rather than Latin, were the vehicle of expression.
These were natural disasters, but they were made all the worse by the inability of the directing elements of society, the princes and clergy, to offer any leadership during these crises. In the next few lectures we will examine the reasons for their failure to do so. The 14th century became an era of catastrophes. Some of them man-made, such as the Hundred Years' War and the Great Schism. These were caused by human beings. But the Black Death caused millions of deaths, and had in its way demonstrated a dramatic fashion the existence of new vulnerabilities in Western European society. The plague subjected the population of medieval Europe to tremendous strains, leading many people to challenge old institutions and doubt traditional values, and, by so doing, these calamities altered the path of European development in many areas.
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Sources:
Black Death. Retrieved October 20, 2008 from http://www.wikipedia.com/black death
Great famine. Retrieved October 20, 2008 from ttp://www.vlib.us/medieval/lectures/black_death
McNeill, W.H. (1998). Plagues and peoples. New York: Anchor Books.
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