The Black Death

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The Black Death
1347 - 1351
Grade 10 History
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• http//www.cnn.com/video//video/health/2011/10/13
  /ctw-anderson-black-death.cnn

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The Culprits
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The Famine of 1315-1317

• By 1300 Europeans were farming almost all the
  land they could cultivate FEUDALISM.
• A population crisis developed OVERCROWDING
• 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
Septicemic Formalmost 100 mortality rate.
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From the Toggenburg Bible, 1411
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Lancing a Buboe
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The Disease Cycle
Flea drinks rat blood that carries the
bacteria.
Bacteria multiply in fleas gut.
Human is infected!
Fleas gut cloggedwith bacteria.
Flea bites human and regurgitates blood into
human wound.
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Medieval Art the Plague
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Medieval Art the Plague http//www.youtube.com/w
atch?vgrbSQ6O6kbs

http//www.youtube.com/watch?vR91L7LhH- 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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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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Death Triumphant !A Major Artistic Theme
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Religious Artifacts
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Plague Pits
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The Black Death or Bubonic Plague

• Common people believed the Plague was caused by
  God.
• 2530 of Europes population was destroyed by
  1350, never to fully recover until 1600s.
• People who survived the Plague were better off
  because there now was more opportunity for them.
• Church uses the plague to claim people are
  sinnershope to reinforce authority.

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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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Continuity and Change

• Change and continuity are on-going and ever
  present
• Change can occur at different rates
• Change and continuity can be both positive and
  negative
• Comparisons can be made between points of history
  and between the past and the present
• Periodization is a way of marking historical
  change and continuity

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The Fourth Horseman

• The factors that allowed the Black Death to
  escape the remoteness of inner Asia and to savage
  the cities of medieval Europe, China, and the
  Middle East still operate. -- The Great
  Mortality
• Today they operate on a vastly larger scale! WHY?