The Black Death

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A Quick Guide To The Black Death

By Rubee Mellon

With the pandemonium brought onto the world due to the outbreak of the coronavirus, I thought it would be interesting to lay out facts about another pandemic, the Black Death, so it is easier to see how far we have come with regards to dealing with disease outbreaks.

Previous Plagues

  • Plague of Athens (430 BC): Estimated deaths of 100,000 people.
  • Antonine Plague (165-180 AD): Estimated deaths of 5 million people in the Roman Empire.
  • Plague of Cyprian (250-271 AD): Estimated deaths of 5000 a day in Rome.
  • Plague of Justinian (541-542 AD): Estimated deaths of 10% of the world's population.

Origins of The Black Death

  • The Black Death is believed to have first started in the mid-1330s.
  • The disease is thought to have originated from Central Asia, with current estimations believing it was in modern day China.
  • It spread to Europe and North Africa around 1346-1347.
  • The disease arrived in Europe via Italy - Italy was a key point of trade between Europe and Asia.

Management of the Black Death

  • Many areas in China often served the most brutal quarantine procedures, bricking up families displaying symptoms inside their own home and subsequently setting it on fire.
  • Italian city states had extensive quarantine and lock down policies. However, due to lots of corruption, these were often ignored by the upper classes who paid officials to forge health certificates to allow them to escape plague-ridden areas.
  • England had next to no protections in place during the Black Death. Limited awareness in predated versions of contagion theory meant to the popular belief being miasma, which is when a disease is spread through 'bad air'. To counteract this, English authorities thought by placing bomb-fires in the streets they were counteracting the chance of infection in citizens.

Blamed Communities

  • There were groups of people that became scapegoats during the pandemic. They were accused of poisoning wells and even witchcraft. These groups included:
  • Jewish communities.
  • Homeless people.
  • Prostitutes.

The Bubonic Plague

  • The belief that the Black Death was the bubonic plague started following the discovery of its bacteria Yersinia pestis in 1894 during a plague outbreak in Hong Kong.
  • The symptoms of those with plague in that pandemic were seen to be similar to those who fell ill during the Black Death,
  • Yersin and Kitasato tested bacterium in the copious amount of dead rats swarming cities and found it matched with the bacterium found in the poorly humans.

Questioning the Disease

  • There has been no historically recorded or archaeological evidence of mass deaths of rodents around the Black Death era. Due to this, some academics have theorised that the illness behind the Black Death was:
  • Anthrax (Graham Twigg)
  • Ebola (Susan Scott)
  • Pneumonic plague (Samuel Cohn)
Obviously, this is a whirlwind tour of the information available on the Black Death. I would advise you do more research if this interests you. There are tons of academic journals on the topic, from both historical and scientific perspectives, depending on your interest persuasion. Some of the best free articles I have found are:
  • C. J. Duncan, S. Scott, 'What Caused the Black Death?', History of Medicine, (2005).
  • Sharon D. Witte, 'Mortality Risk and Survival in the Aftermath of the Medieval Black Death', PLOS One, (2014).
  • Didier Raoult, 'Plague: History and Contemporary Analysis', Journal of Infection, (2012).
  • Pat Lee Shipman, 'The Bright Side of the Black Death', American Scientist.



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