Some patients probably did get petechial hemorrhaging — pinpoint dark spots of blood under the skin. But today, as in the past, plague victims would only have had one bump on their bodies — a big swollen lymph node called a "bubo" close to where they were bitten by a flea carrying the infection.
Within just hours an individual could be in agony from a number of these symptoms, if not all of them. The Black Plague, in all forms, is a relatively fast death, but an astonishingly painful one.
Symptoms are high fevers and purple skin patches (purpura due to disseminated intravascular coagulation). In cases of pneumonic and particularly septicaemic plague, the progress of the disease is so rapid that there would often be no time for the development of the enlarged lymph nodes that were noted as buboes.
Because most people who got the plague died, and many often had blackened tissue due to gangrene, bubonic plague was called the Black Death. A cure for bubonic plague wasn't available.
Bubonic plague causes fever, fatigue, shivering, vomiting, headaches, giddiness, intolerance to light, pain in the back and limbs, sleeplessness, apathy, and delirium. It also causes buboes: one or more of the lymph nodes become tender and swollen, usually in the groin or armpits.
Black Death: 75-200M (1334-1353)
The eventual weakening of the pandemic was likely due to the practice of quarantining infected people that originated in Venice in the 15th century and is with us to this day. Improved sanitation, personal hygiene, and medical practices also played a role in ultimately slowing the plague's terror march.
Modern genetic analysis suggests that the Bubonic plague was caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis or Y. pestis. Chief among its symptoms are painfully swollen lymph glands that form pus-filled boils called buboes.
Plague can take different clinical forms, but the most common are bubonic, pneumonic, and septicemic.
Recent research suggests rats may not have played the critical role in keeping plague going in Europe. The Black Death ravaged Europe between 1347 and 1353, killing millions. Plague outbreaks in Europe then continued until the 19th century.
In the study, Barreiro and his colleagues found that Black Death survivors in London and Denmark had an edge in their genes – mutations that helped protect against the plague pathogen, Yersinia pestis. Survivors passed those mutations onto their descendants, and many Europeans still carry those mutations today.
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.)
The miasma theory of contagious disease held that sickness spread through unpleasant aromas. A whiff of 'bad air' could kill you – and the right fragrance just might save your life. A physician wearing a 17th-century plague preventive. Source: Wellcome Collection.
1. The Black Death. A plague so devastating that simply saying “The Plague” will immediately pull it to the front of your mind, in the middle of the 14th century—from 1347 to 1351—the Black Death remade the landscape of Europe and the world.
In the middle of the 14th century, the Black Death wiped out half of Europe's population. However, Poland and Milan managed to escape the worst of the pandemic and had death rates much lower than those of the other affected nations. There were various factors that helped these two nations.
It was, in fact, a mask with a purpose. It was actually worn by doctors and physicians as a medical uniform, under the supposition it would have protected them from disease when they visited people infected. The theory was that it would isolate the physician and prevent direct contact with the bodies of plague victims.
The unceasing flow of sea, river, and road traffic between commercial centers spread the plague across huge distances in what is known as a “metastatic leap.” Big commercial cities were infected first, and from there the plague radiated to nearby towns and villages, from where it would spread into the countryside.
Plague pandemics hit the world in three waves from the 1300s to the 1900s and killed millions of people. 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.
Pneumonic plague affects the lungs. The disease may begin in the lungs, or it may spread from infected lymph nodes to the lungs. Symptoms can begin within a few hours after exposure and worsen rapidly.
In 1666 the Great Fire of London destroyed much of the centre of London, but also helped to kill off some of the black rats and fleas that carried the plague bacillus.
It is an acute inflammation of the lymph nodes in the inguinal and femoral regions. It causes swelling in the inguinal lymph nodes, which is painful and moves on palpation. Inguinal buboes occur as a result of sexually transmitted infections. Men are affected more than females.
The Black Death (1346-1353)
Today, modern antibiotics are effective in treating plague. Without prompt treatment, the disease can cause serious illness or death. Presently, human plague infections continue to occur in rural areas in the western United States, but significantly more cases occur in parts of Africa and Asia.
Some believed it was a punishment from God, some believed that foreigners or those who followed a different religion had poisoned the wells, some thought that bad air was responsible, some thought the position of the planets had caused the plague.