What is the modern explanation of the bubonic plague?

Bubonic plague is an infection spread mostly to humans by infected fleas that travel on rodents. Called the Black Death, it killed millions of Europeans during the Middle Ages. Prevention doesn’t include a vaccine, but does involve reducing your exposure to mice, rats, squirrels and other animals that may be infected.

What is the theme of the bubonic plague?

Its theme was the universality of death, expressing the common wisdom of the time that no matter one’s station in life, the dance of death united all.

How did the bubonic plague help society?

The plague had large scale social and economic effects, many of which are recorded in the introduction of the Decameron. People abandoned their friends and family, fled cities, and shut themselves off from the world. Funeral rites became perfunctory or stopped altogether, and work ceased being done.

How did the bubonic plague become a pandemic?

The plague’s spread significantly begins to peter out, possibly thanks to quarantine efforts, after causing the deaths of anywhere between 25 to 50 million people, and leading to the massacres of 210 Jewish communities. All total, Europe has lost about 50 percent of its population.

Was bubonic plague a virus?

Unlike coronavirus, most scholars agree on the cause of bubonic plague. Bubonic plague is caused by a bacterium, Yersinia pestis. However, the culprits anthrax, hemorrhagic viral fever, and louse-borne typhus have also been credibly proposed, according to Andrew Noymer, professor of public health at UC Irvine.

Was there a cure for the plague?

Unlike Europe’s disastrous bubonic plague epidemic, the plague is now curable in most cases. It can successfully be treated with antibiotics, and according to the CDC , treatment has lowered mortality rates to approximately 11 percent. The antibiotics work best if given within 24 hours of the first symptoms.

How did the black plague affect the environment?

Irrigation decay led to desiccation in many areas, depriving rich farmland of its water supply, altered the saline balance of the soil, had a profound effect on the usage of viable flood basin acreage, and shifted the land’s ecology from arable to pasture, thereby shifting the balance of power from the peasants to the …