The Black Death

The Black Death or The Plague is one of the most devastating pandemics in history, there have been different outbreaks, but the most virulent affected Asia, Europe and North Africa in the mid-fourteenth century causing an estimated 30 million deaths, the The cause was the bacterium Yersinia pestis, which is why in the 19th century it was called Black Death, rodents such as rats and gerbils, were carriers of this disease and it reached humans through the bite of fleas.

There are three types of plague: pneumonic, bubonic, and septicemic.

People infected by fleas acquire the bubonic form of the plague, however, if the bacteria reaches the lungs, it becomes pneumonic that spreads more virulently from person to person “through the air” several scientists think that the great expansion Of the plague was actually between humans, it is clear that rodents passed it to us, but the fundamental vectors of the expansion were men.
The pneumonic form of the plague spreads and kills much faster, we also know that added to the medical-scientific deficiencies of the time one of the main causes of expansion was the almost null hygiene of the time, today we know that Yersinia pestis can survive for at least 24 days in contaminated soils and up to 5 days in other materials.

The spread of the disease, which apparently originated in Asia, was through trade routes, mainly the Silk Road, covering all of Europe in just 7 years, it did not affect all places in the same way but there was no corner that was not affected… Although there were places like Milan, a certain area of ​​the Pyrenees, part of the Netherlands and the area that would roughly correspond to the Kingdom of Poland, none of these places were spared from the plague, they were simply seen less affected.
We know that a significant number of the population of Poland and Milan died from the plague, but their mortality rates were low compared to the rest of Europe, Poland lost about a quarter of its population due to the plague and the rate of Milan’s mortality was around 15%, one of the lowest in the entire old continent. The average for Europe was between 50% and 60%, we cannot give a clear answer as to why this happened, as there is little documentation in this regard.

The deaths were not evenly distributed across Europe, some areas were minimally affected while others were practically depopulated. 5 hypotheses are established to try to get closer to what happened.

1. Urban, not rural disease.

The plague was a fundamentally urban disease, since pilgrims and travelers who transmitted it stayed in cities and feudal towns, not in rural areas, due to the communication nodes and accommodation against this hypothesis, there are those who comment that people with greater resources tried escape the cities and seek refuge in the countryside, taking disease with them. Trade between town and country was never interrupted and with it the spread of the plague.
Poland was a less urban area compared to others in Europe and this could be one of the reasons for the low penetration of the Black Death. It is also true that if there are fewer people there are fewer rats, because they were looking for the excess food, in any case, rodents are usually present in growing areas next to grain stores, but the distances between farms would make transmission difficult.

2. Quarantine.

King Casimir III the Great (1310–1370) quarantined his country and closed the Polish borders, the impact of the disease in Poland was softened, it also seems that King Casimir III in addition to the border blockade established the mandatory quarantine internal, thus travelers and pilgrims before entering the cities had to camp outside them for a period of time.

3. Little Trade.

Poland was not a country with resources to attract trade routes, it could not be bought or sold, so the number of carriers who visited it was far less than others, this hypothesis gains strength in areas of present-day Spain, as well In parts of Castilla and Navarra it did not affect as much as Aragon precisely because of the commercial isolation of certain areas, there are historians who dispute this hypothesis because one of the main trade routes in eastern Europe passed through Poland, it circulated through Scandinavia, Poland, Ukraine and the Black Sea.

4. Few rats.

Poland and Bohemia were areas with fewer rats than other areas of the continent, possibly due to the greater shortage of food, there are also historians who speak of a greater number of cat populations, which would point to fewer rodents, it must be remembered that in the Christian Europe of the time the cat was not a well-regarded animal. Thus, the image of the cat as a cruel animal, which enjoys the pain of others, helped to create a certain association of the animal with the devil, not to mention black cats.

5. Unfavorable weather.

The humid continental climate of Poland, which is more extreme and less humid than the temperate oceanic climate of Western Europe, was less conducive to the spread of plague, especially in some pneumonic versions, for the same reason we could not ask why Russia was so affected with an even more extreme climate.
Europe had been overpopulated before the plague, Walter Scheidel argues that the waves of the plague after its initial outbreak had a leveling effect that changed the ratio of land to labor, reducing the value of the former and increasing the value of the latter, thus reducing economic inequality by making landlords and employers richer while improving the situation of workers, “the observed improvement in the living standards of the working population originated in the suffering and premature death of tens of millions over the course of several generations”.

The renewed fanaticism arose in the wake of the Black Death, causing Jews, foreigners, friars, beggars and lepers to be attacked with the belief that they were to blame for the crisis, cultural differences and lifestyle led to persecution when in mid In the fourteenth century the plague wiped out more than half the population.
In the medical area, the plague highlighted the deficiencies of the time, bringing positive changes in the advancement of medical studies, the way in which the human body was studied changed remarkably, becoming a process that dealt more directly with the human body. In various states of disease and health, the importance of surgeons at this time became more apparent, as David Herlihy indicates in The Black Death and the Transformation of the West, more emphasis was placed on post-Black Death anatomical investigations.