The Black Death Strikes

             Plague had first started in about 1347. The disease came not by land but by sea. It is thought that rats on cargo ships had infected sailors from Egypt and brought the illness to Greece. Some of the first cases were reported in Piraeus, the port that had served Athens.Within days hundreds of people had fell ill with the mysterious disease. Nobody knew what the disease was or what caused it, but they knew how deadly it was. The first time plague hit was the worst, killing the largest amount of people it had any other time. The first symptoms were severe headache and redness of the eyes. These symptoms were followed by inflammation of the tongue, and a hacking cough. After this the severe symptoms hit. This included severe intestinal upsets, such as, vomiting and acute diarrhea. A high temperature and breaking out with reddish spots was also common with this disease and was seen often. Some of the symptoms compare to today's common flu. Many Europeans living in the medieval ages experienced seeing their loved ones suffer and die from this illness. Imagine what would happen if a disease occurred like this nowadays. What do you think would happen?

 Some of the most common ways the disease spread was through fleas from rats and contact with fluids. Although sometimes the disease spread through people breathing the contaminated air of pneumonic plague. When people went outside the usually held a cloth up by their nose and mouth. People living in cities did almost everything they could that they thought would prevent the disease. Some people completely left moving away in isolation of everyone else.  Others boarded up windows of their house in hope that that would protect them and their family. Infected people usually died around 7-9 days receiving getting the symptoms. Death would've been slow and painful. I'm sure by the time the people fighting the illness would have rather been dead then alive because all the things they had suffered from the disease. Nearly one-third of the population was wiped out by the Black Death. This was just the start of the Black Death. It continued to spread and kill hundreds.