However, one study has indicated that children are more likely to have swelling in the cervical and armpit areas. During the period of history known as the Black Death epidemic, when the bubonic plague killed about one-third of European people, the mortality rate of children was exceptionally high.
Fleas that bite infected rats pick up the plague bacteria. They then spread it to other rats or to people through bites. Infected people sometimes spread the disease to others when they cough. Once inside a person's body, the plague bacteria enter the bloodstream.
The effects of the Black Death were many and varied. Trade suffered for a time, and wars were temporarily abandoned. Many labourers died, which devastated families through lost means of survival and caused personal suffering; landowners who used labourers as tenant farmers were also affected.
Kids Definition
black death. noun. : plague (as bubonic plague) caused by a bacterium and especially in the epidemic form that spread through Asia and Europe in the 14th century. also : the 14th-century epidemic of plague.
At face value, these results might suggest that compared to normal medieval mortality, the Black Death disproportionately affected young adults and very old adults.
Without the Black Plague, feudalism would persist and the class division in Europe would never end, similar to other parts of the world that stunted their development. One of the most significant features of an overpopulated feudalist society is that labour is cheap and hence easily accessible.
Rats traveled on ships and brought fleas and plague with them. Because most people who got the plague died, and many often had blackened tissue due to gangrene, bubonic plague was called the Black Death.
In the meantime, it was a leading cause of death for children around the world. “Diphtheria contributed to that notion that childhood was not a safe time, that many children would die by the age of 10,” says Evelynn M.
People abandoned their friends and family, fled cities, and shut themselves off from the world. Funeral rites became perfunctory or stopped altogether, and work ceased being done.
Bubonic plague: The incubation period of bubonic plague is usually 2 to 8 days. Patients develop fever, headache, chills, and weakness and one or more swollen, painful lymph nodes (called buboes). This form usually results from the bite of an infected flea.
Due to the fact that so many had died, there were far fewer people to work the land: peasants were therefore able to demand better conditions and higher wages from their landlords. Many advanced to higher positions in society. Thus the Black Death was ultimately responsible for major shifts in the social structure.
The Black Death had profound effects on art and literature. After 1350, European culture in general turned very morbid. The general mood was one of pessimism, and contemporary art turned dark with representations of death.
The consequences of this violent catastrophe were many. A cessation of wars and a sudden slump in trade immediately followed but were only of short duration. A more lasting and serious consequence was the drastic reduction of the amount of land under cultivation, due to the deaths of so many labourers.
Today, scientists understand that the Black Death, now known as the plague, is spread by a bacillus called Yersinia pestis. (The French biologist Alexandre Yersin discovered this germ at the end of the 19th century.)
Plague has occurred in people of all ages (infants up to age 96), though 50% of cases occur in people ages 12–45. It occurs in both men and women, though historically is slightly more common among men, probably because of increased outdoor activities that put them at higher risk.
At the same time, the plague brought benefits as well: modern labor movements, improvements in medicine and a new approach to life. Indeed, much of the Italian Renaissance—even Shakespeare's drama to some extent—is an aftershock of the Black Death.
When plague hit a community, every aspect of life was turned upside down, from relations within families to its social, political, and economic stucture. Theaters emptied, graveyards filled, and the streets were ruled by the terrible corpse-bearers whose wagons of death rumbled day and night.
The 10 Plagues of Egypt in Order are: water turning to blood, frogs, lice, flies, livestock pestilence, boils, hail, locusts, darkness, and the killing of firstborn children. These plagues are recorded in the Bible, and were sent by God after Pharaoh refused to let the Israelites leave Egypt.
Diphtheria (Corynebacterium diphtheriae), an acute bacterial infection spread by personal contact, was the most feared of all childhood diseases.
A new study suggests that people who survived the medieval mass-killing plague known as the Black Death lived significantly longer and were healthier than people who lived before the epidemic struck in 1347.
Plague vaccines ** have been used since the late 19th century, but their effectiveness has never been measured precisely. Field experience indicates that vaccination with plague vaccine reduces the incidence and severity of disease resulting from the bite of infected fleas.
Specifically, historians have speculated that the fleas on rats are responsible for the estimated 25 million plague deaths between 1347 and 1351. However, a new study suggests that rats weren't the main carriers of fleas and lice that spread the plague—it was humans.
The first wave, called the Black Death in Europe, was from 1347 to 1351. The second wave in the 1500s saw the emergence of a new virulent strain of the disease.