The plague that caused the Black Death originated in China in the early to mid-1300s and spread along trade routes westward to the Mediterranean and northern Africa. It reached southern England in 1348 and northern Britain and Scandinavia by 1350.

port of Messina

1347: The Black Death Comes to Europe The first recorded appearance of the plague in Europe was at Messina, Sicily, in October of 1347. It arrived on trading ships that likely came from the Black Sea, past Constantinople and through the Mediterranean.

It was reportedly first introduced to Europe at the trading city of Caffa in the Crimea in 1347. The Genoese traders fled, bringing the plague by ship into Sicily and Southern Europe, whence it spread.

The most popular theory of how the plague ended is through the implementation of quarantines. The uninfected would typically remain in their homes and only leave when it was necessary, while those who could afford to do so would leave the more densely populated areas and live in greater isolation.

Plague in the United States The last urban plague epidemic in the United States occurred in Los Angeles from 1924 through 1925. Plague then spread from urban rats to rural rodent species, and became entrenched in many areas of the western United States.

Although first built in 1593, the pest-house played a vital role in attempting to quarantine the outbreak in 1665. Bodies were then buried at an adjoining common cemetery between Poland Street and Marshall Street.

An urban myth is Blackheath could derive from the 1665 Plague or the Black Death of the mid-14th century. A local burial pit is nonetheless likely during the Black Death, given the established village and safe harbour (hithe) status of Greenwich.

How quickly did the Black Death spread? It is thought that the Black Death spread at a rate of a mile or more a day, but other accounts have measured it in places to have averaged as far as eight miles a day.

The bubonic plague mechanism was also dependent on two populations of rodents: one resistant to the disease, which act as hosts, keeping the disease endemic, and a second that lack resistance. When the second population dies, the fleas move on to other hosts, including people, thus creating a human epidemic.

Genesis. The Black Death was an epidemic which ravaged Europe between 1347 and 1400. It was a disease spread through contact with animals (zoonosis), basically through fleas and other rat parasites (at that time, rats often coexisted with humans, thus allowing the disease to spread so quickly).

As long as land was available, plague victims were buried in cemeteries: usually in churchyards, along with those who died of other causes. “People think that every time something is excavated and there are bodies, and they didn’t know they were going to be there, it has to be a plague pit,” she says.

Burning the bodies was a good idea considering the disease can not live unless the body is alive. By burning the bodies of the dead, the people were killing the disease. One form of plague traveled through air, and bodies had to be alive to have it. After about 3 to 5 days with the plague the person usually died.

Plague is divided into three main types — bubonic, septicemic and pneumonic — depending on which part of your body is involved. Signs and symptoms vary depending on the type of plague.

The plague is a serious bacterial infection that can be deadly. Sometimes referred to as the “black plague,” the disease is caused by a bacterial strain called Yersinia pestis. This bacterium is found in animals throughout the world and is usually transmitted to humans through fleas.

Symptoms

• Bubonic plague: Patients develop sudden onset of fever, headache, chills, and weakness and one or more swollen, tender and painful lymph nodes (called buboes).
• Septicemic plague: Patients develop fever, chills, extreme weakness, abdominal pain, shock, and possibly bleeding into the skin and other organs.

noun. an epidemic disease that causes high mortality; pestilence. an infectious, epidemic disease caused by a bacterium, Yersinia pestis, characterized by fever, chills, and prostration, transmitted to humans from rats by means of the bites of fleas.

As nouns the difference between pestilence and plague is that pestilence is any epidemic disease that is highly contagious, infectious, virulent and devastating while plague is the bubonic plague, the pestilent disease caused by the virulent bacterium ”yersinia pestis .

Because Pharaoh refused to set the Israelites free, God decided to punish him, sending ten plagues on to Egypt. These included: The Plague of Blood.

Bubonic plague is transmitted through the bite of an infected flea or exposure to infected material through a break in the skin. Symptoms include swollen, tender lymph glands called buboes.

Rats have long been blamed for spreading the parasites that transmitted plague throughout medieval Europe and Asia, killing millions of people. The Great Plague of London (1665-1666) was estimated to kill nearly a quarter of the city’s population in 18 months alone.