Justinian's Plague In The Middle Ages

The Black Plague came to life in the 1300s, and carried on through the Elizabethan Era. It was first seen on trading boats crossing the Black Sea. “The Plague was a bacterial disease that started from small fleas

Diseases have always been a threat to humans, all throughout history. One of the most destructive disease outbreaks in history was the plague outbreak which peaked in 1346 to 1353, in Europe, commonly known as the Black Death. This plague outbreak was extremely deadly and killed 30-60% of the European population at the time of the outbreak. The outbreak is commonly believed to have been caused by the bubonic plague, but modern evidence suggests that the Black Death was caused by pneumonic plague, a much more contagious and deadly infection.

Diseases have been categorized as under a derogatory and lamentable category. However, Dr.Sharon Moalem and Jonathan Prince approach diseases from a different view in their scientific book Survival of the Sickest . They discuss that if diseases weren 't helpful, shouldn 't they have been eliminated through natural selection or shouldn 't humans have developed resistance to them through the use of evolution? Moalem and Prince answer the questions by going back in time and analyzing the uses of diseases, and come across surprises that may help humans in the future as they may have in the past. Though Moalem and Prince discussed many diseases in their book Survival of the Sickest, three diseases really stood out.

Some people may not realize that the plague to abolish about one third of Europe's population, is still infecting humans. In the 2000s, over 20,000 people became infected by the bubonic plague, but now because of the medical advancements since the medieval times, it doesn't take as many lives. During the 13th through 14th century, when the pandemic had reached its all time high, it had came through fleas biting humans and many had to suffer through the agonizing symptoms. Then it had finally simmered down, but there were long lasting effects from the plague.

This article is mainly about the Justinian Plague that killed up to 50 million people, around 1,500 years ago. This happened around Asia, Africa and Europe. This disease was passed onto human from rodents.A lot of studies show that the bacteria that caused this illness will no longer be found. People who had Justinian Plague and the Black Plague had similar symptoms, and scientists think that the same bacteria caused both of these diseases.

Imagine eating rat poop on your food! In this essay I will be talking about the Black and , Justinian plague.

In the fourteenth century, there was a plague that spread quickly, called the Black Death, or the bubonic plague; it killed 20-30 billion people in Europe in the 14th century (“The black plague…”). In China, it killed 12 million people in the 19th century and slowly traveled to America with the help of rats on ships from other countries. The bubonic plague was found in rodents, like rats, and also in fleas. If a person was bitten by an animal with the virus, then they would contract the bubonic plague. Thanks to better working conditions, antibiotics, and better sanitation, there were only 2,118 cases of the bubonic plague in 2003 worldwide. Only one in every seven people died (“The

A wide range of food in stores is a hallmark of globalized trade to western consumers. The ability to buy out of season and exotic products at any given time is an often referenced and cherished aspect of globalization. Health risks resulting from the movements of people and goods are not a new problem, though attention has been ramping up. During exploration and subsequent settlement of the Americas virgin-soil diseases killed up to an estimated 90% of native inhabitants ("The Impact of European Diseases on Native Americans", 2017, para 6). The Justinian Plague in 541/542, believed to be the earliest instance of the bubonic plague coming from China, is a very early example of a pandemic imported through trade. The pathogens are believed to

The Justinian Plague was the first recorded pandemic and was named after the 6th century Byzantine emperor Justinian I. It began in 541 AD, followed by outbreaks that killed over 25 million people over the next 200 years. This is the most common plague, bubonic, which created a devastating outbreak in the 14th century, also known as the Black Death.

Diseases can be preventable and curable but many still manage to devastate on international scales, whether it was during the Middle Ages or today. These illnesses are sometimes underrated in their effects on the human race where symptoms can range from minimal to down-right devastating and painful. No matter where it started, they can bring devastating effects to the surrounding area. When someone wants to know about a disease, they want to know where it came from, it's symptoms, and how it affected the community in which it appeared. The Black Death, Ebola, and the Zika virus are examples of large-scale illnesses that vary in all three of these topics but still managed to threaten humans on a bigger scale than expected. Diseases like the

The Middle Ages were a time of great human advances in medicine, education, and many very important aspects of society. All of these advances were helping the world advance quicker and quicker, they made many great leaps towards modern medicinal practices. They began to behave as a sophisticated economy that helped each other. This progress was all halted, or at least had a change of direction when the Black Death struck. The Black Death impacted so many different areas of society and how they approached social, economic, and medical issues.

Imagine having red and purple swellings over a vast amount of your body. This was just one the many different symptoms of the Bubonic Plague. When the Bubonic Plague (black death) broke out in the middle ages many different aspects helped spread and further the causes of the disease. Several countries at the time had also been at war (Hundred Years’ War), which helped the mysterious disease spread even faster and weakened the economy. Many people think the political, social, and religious aspects affected and helped increase the causes of the disease, however the economic aspect increasingly furthered the causes of the disease at a much quicker pace.

Justinian I, commonly known as Justinian the Great, was the Eastern Roman Emperor from 527 until he died on November 14th 565 when he was 82 years old. Which is pretty old in Ancient Rome because the average lifespan was 35 years and in the “ancient world” at least half of the kids in Rome died before the age of 10. Surprisingly, Justinian lived 47 years more than the “average” man. He is considered a saint by Eastern Orthodox Christians. Justinian simplified Roman laws. These are now called Corpus Juris Civilis which is the collective title of the body of ancient Roman law; organized and categorized under the emperor Justinian in the 6th century a.d.

“His vesture was dabbled in blood—and his broad brow, with all the features of the face, was besprinkled with the scarlet horror.” (Poe, 5) As the Red Death ravaged through time the question remains, what would happen now? With today’s booming populations and frequent trade routes being open 24/7 plagues and other wide spread disease could quickly and effectively wipe out our nation. “This pestilence was so powerful that it spread from the ill to the healthy like fire among dry or oily materials. It was so bad that it could be communicated not only through speaking or associating with the sick, but even by touching their clothing or anything else they had touched.” (Boccaccio, 2) With the help of FEMA and other organization though it could be argued that the human population could survive.

Throughout history, the emergence of infectious diseases has led to a proliferation of control treatments. Despite successful control methods, the recurring emergence of both new and old infectious diseases has preserved human mortality (Schrag & Wiener 1995, p. 319). It is the globalisation of such infections that traverse, the single appearance of a disease, to the entire world within a limited time span. The definition of emerging infections according to Schwartz and Yogev ( 1996, p. 226) (in the institute of medicine in a 1992 report) is “diseases of infectious origin whose incidence in humans has increased within the past two decades or threatens to increase in the near future”. Newly emerging infections, however, confine the definition to newly identified infections that have recently appeared in the populace or geographical location (Morse 2001, p. 1). While, the origin of new infectious disease epidemics may be inexplicable, it is apparent that specific factors influence the fluctuation of incidences. These factors are interrelated, often through human facilitation, thus the question becomes “Do humans have a higher susceptibility to newly emerging infections?”