The Black Death

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The Black Death
1347 - 1351
S. WatsonNorthside HS Graphics Sue Poejer
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• What aspects of the Middle Ages leave room for
  disease to reach epidemic proportions?
• Why did this not reach such numbers in the Muslim
  world? China? Greece? Rome? What changed
  in Europe??
• How will this cause changes in cultures?

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The Culprits
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The Famine of 1315-1317

• Climate changes in Europe produced three years of
  crop failures between 1315-17 because of
  excessive rain.
• As many as 15 of the peasants in some English
  villages died.
• One consequence ofstarvation povertywas
  susceptibility todisease.

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1347 Plague Reaches Constantinople!
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The Symptoms
Bulbous
Septicemia Formalmost 100 mortality rate.
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From the Toggenburg Bible, 1411
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Lancing a Buboe
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Medieval Art the Plague
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Medieval Art the Plague
Bring out your dead!
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Medieval Art the Plague
An obsession with death.
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Boccaccio in The Decameron
The victims ate lunch with their friends and
dinner with their ancestors.
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The Danse Macabre
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(No Transcript)
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Attempts to Stop the Plague
Leeching
A Doctors Robe
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Attempts to Stop the Plague
FlagellantiSelf-inflicted penance for our
sins!
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Attempts to Stop the Plague
Pograms against the Jews
Golden Circle obligatory badge
Jew hat
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Death Triumphant !A Major Artistic Theme
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A Little Macabre Ditty
A sickly season, the merchant said,The town I
left was filled with dead,and everywhere these
queer red fliescrawled upon the corpses
eyes,eating them away.Fair make you sick,
the merchant said,They crawled upon the wine
and bread.Pale priests with oil and
books,bulging eyes and crazy looks,dropping
like the flies.
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A Little Macabre Ditty (2)
I had to laugh, the merchant said,The doctors
purged, and dosed, and bledAnd proved through
solemn disputationThe cause lay in some
constellation.Then they began to die.First
they sneezed, the merchant said,And then they
turned the brightest red,Begged for water, then
fell back.With bulging eyes and face turned
black,they waited for the flies.
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A Little Macabre Ditty (3)
I came away, the merchant said,You cant do
business with the dead.So Ive come here to ply
my trade.Youll find this to be a fine brocade
And then he sneezed.!
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The Mortality Rate
35 - 70
25,000,000 dead !!!
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What were thepolitical,economic,and social
effectsof the Black Death??