Black Death The Greatest Catastrophe Ever Spread Across Europe in the Years 1346-53

Pre-20th-century use of biological weapons ? Ole J Benedictow describes how he calculated that the Black Death killed 50 million people in the 14th century, or 60 per cent of Europe’s entire population. Ole Jørgen Benedictow (born 22 July 1941) is a Norwegian historian. Having spent his entire professional career at the University of Oslo, he is especially known for his work on plagues, especially the Black Death.

The Black Death was the first recorded pandemic in Europe after the fall of the Roman Empire. All across the continent, people learned just how gruesome and horrific disease could be as the plague crossed the boundaries of countries and the lines established by society, killing everyone equally. It showed that no one—not even archbishops and kings—were immune from its grasp. The ferocity with which the plague swept across the continent, even reaching the shores of England, demonstrated how unprepared they were for something on such a large scale. It was the first time that a major disease would strike the continent after the fall of the Roman Empire, but it would not be the last.

The disastrous mortal disease known as the Black Death spread across Europe in the years 1346-53. The frightening name, however, only came several centuries after its visitation (and was probably a mistranslation of the Latin word ‘atra’ meaning both ‘terrible’ and ‘black)’.
The tragedy was extraordinary. In the course of just a few months, 60 per cent of Florence’s population died from the plague, and probably the same proportion in Siena.

The Black Death was an epidemic of bubonic plague, a disease caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis that circulates among wild rodents where they live in great numbers and density. Such an area is called a ‘plague focus’ or a ‘plague reservoir’. Plague among humans arises when rodents in human habitation, normally black rats, become infected. The black rat, also called the ‘house rat’ and the ‘ship rat’, likes to live close to people, the very quality that makes it dangerous (in contrast, the brown or grey rat prefers to keep its distance in sewers and cellars). Normally, it takes ten to fourteen days before plague has killed off most of a contaminated rat colony, making it difficult for great numbers of fleas gathered on the remaining, but soon- dying, rats to find new hosts. After three days of fasting, hungry rat fleas turn on humans. From the bite site, the contagion drains to a lymph node that consequently swells to form a painful bubo, most often in the groin, on the thigh, in an armpit or on the neck. Hence the name bubonic plague. The infection takes three–five days to incubate in people before they fall ill, and another three–five days before, in 80 per cent of the cases, the victims die. Thus, from the introduction of plague contagion among rats in a human community it takes, on average, twenty-three days before the first person dies.