WEBVTT - How the Black Death Worked 0:00:00.280 --> 0:00:02.840 Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera. 0:00:03.160 --> 0:00:07.560 It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff you Should Know 0:00:08.160 --> 0:00:16.400 from house stuff Works dot Com? Hey, and welcome to 0:00:16.440 --> 0:00:19.200 the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with me as always this 0:00:19.320 --> 0:00:22.439 Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and that makes this stuff you 0:00:22.480 --> 0:00:27.800 should know the podcast, the audio podcast. Nothing more? Got it? 0:00:28.360 --> 0:00:34.159 Not a lot less then comparably sized podcasts. No, no, 0:00:34.360 --> 0:00:35.960 this is chock full of good stuff. This one's good 0:00:35.960 --> 0:00:38.400 of man, do you think so? Oh? Yeah, I liked it. 0:00:38.600 --> 0:00:39.879 You like this one? Yeah? I like some of the 0:00:39.920 --> 0:00:42.000 historical stuff we did. Man, I love it. You know, 0:00:42.000 --> 0:00:47.120 as a history major at one point, I love history, yeah, Chuck. Yes, 0:00:47.320 --> 0:00:50.960 So we're talking about the Black Death, yeah right, not 0:00:51.120 --> 0:00:54.880 Black Sabbath like death. Well, I'm gonna need some more 0:00:54.880 --> 0:00:57.960 time now, okay, so we'll wait, hold on, okay, alright, 0:00:58.120 --> 0:01:04.600 I'm back. Yes, you understand now what we're talking about? Great, chuck. Um. 0:01:04.640 --> 0:01:07.640 I was researching this to find out, like, okay, what's 0:01:07.640 --> 0:01:09.600 newsy about the Black Death? Like? How am I going 0:01:09.640 --> 0:01:12.240 to find an intro? I actually found one? Really, Yeah, 0:01:12.319 --> 0:01:17.520 it's it's from two thousand six, February two thousand and six. Sorry, 0:01:17.640 --> 0:01:19.560 but there was a study that came out of you 0:01:19.640 --> 0:01:23.919 tricked university. Have you ever heard of the Little Ice Age? 0:01:24.680 --> 0:01:30.000 There was a period in um world history, global history. 0:01:30.400 --> 0:01:34.320 I think it may have been kind of localized to Europe. 0:01:34.880 --> 0:01:39.200 So let's say European history in about the fifteen hundreds, 0:01:39.640 --> 0:01:45.679 where there was this inexplicable period of cold. Interesting, right, 0:01:46.080 --> 0:01:50.279 it's called the Little Ice Age, harmful cold. It got cold, 0:01:51.200 --> 0:01:54.160 like our our conception of like why you know, vikings 0:01:54.160 --> 0:01:56.920 were pelts and everything, they're always walking around it's very cold, 0:01:57.480 --> 0:02:01.720 not just because they live in skin navya, but because 0:02:01.920 --> 0:02:06.040 it was cold. Then okay, so this Little Ice Age, 0:02:06.360 --> 0:02:09.320 like I said, inexplicable. No one had any idea why 0:02:09.360 --> 0:02:13.440 it happened. And these you tricked researchers got that got 0:02:13.480 --> 0:02:20.480 ahold of some tree samples, some leaf samples from eras 0:02:20.560 --> 0:02:24.600 before the Little Ice Age and after, and they started 0:02:24.639 --> 0:02:27.240 counting stomas. These are the pores on the leaves. The 0:02:27.280 --> 0:02:29.880 more stomage you have, the more carbon dioxide there is 0:02:29.919 --> 0:02:33.480 in the air. Leaves developed these stomas, they can absorb 0:02:33.560 --> 0:02:37.680 more C O two. Right, So if so facto, the 0:02:37.720 --> 0:02:39.560 more stonage you have, the more c O two in 0:02:39.560 --> 0:02:42.640 the atmosphere, and what they found by counting these stomas 0:02:43.040 --> 0:02:45.040 was that there was a lot of c O two 0:02:45.080 --> 0:02:50.600 prior to the forties in Europe. That means that there's 0:02:50.639 --> 0:02:52.799 not that much c O two. You know that there 0:02:52.880 --> 0:02:54.480 was a lot of c O two in the air 0:02:54.800 --> 0:02:57.600 in the atmosphere. One reason there's a lot of CEO 0:02:57.639 --> 0:02:59.720 two is because there's not a lot of trees to 0:03:00.200 --> 0:03:03.360 soaked that CEO two up. One reason there's not a 0:03:03.360 --> 0:03:05.520 lot of trees is because humans are cutting down the 0:03:05.560 --> 0:03:12.400 trees to farm land, right or just stay warm. There's 0:03:12.680 --> 0:03:16.799 there's fewer trees deforestation brought on by human activity. Okay, 0:03:17.160 --> 0:03:22.040 So what they find then is that after fifty roughly, 0:03:22.560 --> 0:03:26.280 there's suddenly fewer stomas, which means that there's less c 0:03:26.440 --> 0:03:28.520 O two in the air, which means that there's more trees. 0:03:28.800 --> 0:03:31.520 Do you know ei there are more trees? Do you 0:03:32.160 --> 0:03:36.360 I have a good guess it's because in between that time, 0:03:36.520 --> 0:03:40.440 the forties and the thirteen fifties, the Black Death happened 0:03:40.720 --> 0:03:45.320 and so many people died that it had a measurable 0:03:45.360 --> 0:03:49.720 effect on the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere because of 0:03:50.320 --> 0:03:52.800 not that many trees and then suddenly lots of trees 0:03:53.040 --> 0:03:55.240 because there was no one to tend this farm land 0:03:55.960 --> 0:03:58.880 in the interesting you know what else, This was a 0:03:58.920 --> 0:04:00.960 tidbit from the end. But money, as we'll say it here. 0:04:01.440 --> 0:04:03.640 They think that there is a lack of genetic diversity 0:04:03.680 --> 0:04:07.360 in the UK today because of the Black Death, they 0:04:07.360 --> 0:04:10.440 were much more genetically diverse than the eleventh century. It 0:04:10.560 --> 0:04:15.880 represented what's called the population bottleneck. Million people died, about 0:04:16.000 --> 0:04:20.440 a third of the population of Europe, which is mind boggling. Yeah, 0:04:20.480 --> 0:04:22.479 it's all right, let's do it. Well, I was reading 0:04:22.480 --> 0:04:24.440 this one his story in his name is Skip Knox, 0:04:24.640 --> 0:04:26.080 and I don't know where he is now, but when 0:04:26.080 --> 0:04:29.400 he wrote that it was at the university no Boise State, 0:04:30.040 --> 0:04:33.719 and he said, um, he goes it's uh, it's worth 0:04:33.760 --> 0:04:39.400 saying this has never happened before or since. It was 0:04:39.839 --> 0:04:43.440 an event like this where within about to three years 0:04:45.760 --> 0:04:50.880 million people died. That's never happened before. I mean, no 0:04:51.080 --> 0:04:54.200 war can account for that, Yeah, no other pandemic. Yeah, 0:04:54.240 --> 0:04:56.320 it's this is this was it. This was as bad 0:04:56.360 --> 0:04:59.080 as it gets, and it was bad that it was bad, 0:04:59.120 --> 0:05:02.400 and it was bad not is because of the ultimate devastation, 0:05:02.560 --> 0:05:05.520 but it was bad because of how gnarly the black 0:05:05.560 --> 0:05:07.640 death is. Yeah, why don't you want to talk about 0:05:07.640 --> 0:05:10.840 some symptoms? All right? If you had the Black death, 0:05:11.000 --> 0:05:13.040 this is what you had to look forward to. First 0:05:13.080 --> 0:05:16.560 of all, you had no idea what was happening to you. 0:05:16.600 --> 0:05:20.880 Neither did your doctor, neither did your local cardinal or bishop. 0:05:21.080 --> 0:05:22.800 And you know, they didn't know a lot back then, 0:05:22.920 --> 0:05:25.440 but they had their like cock eye theories. At least 0:05:25.560 --> 0:05:28.040 they didn't even have cock eye theories on this. They 0:05:28.080 --> 0:05:30.320 had a cock eyed theory that everybody went along with. 0:05:30.560 --> 0:05:32.880 They developed some but initially they're like, I don't know 0:05:32.880 --> 0:05:37.760 what this is, but you have these big tumor lumps. 0:05:38.520 --> 0:05:40.920 You got them on your body, you got black spots. 0:05:41.400 --> 0:05:44.120 Well tell them about the tumors somewhere small, but they 0:05:44.120 --> 0:05:46.720 could get pretty big. Yeah, some as big as an apple. 0:05:46.760 --> 0:05:48.880 And they said in the article here that if you 0:05:48.880 --> 0:05:51.200 had one on your neck, it could permanently like cock 0:05:51.279 --> 0:05:54.080 your head to one side, permanently, meaning like the five 0:05:54.160 --> 0:05:58.200 days you had. I know, I hope it's okay to 0:05:58.279 --> 0:06:03.080 laugh a little bit this now. And you surely know, um, 0:06:03.120 --> 0:06:08.760 you had plus using out of sores, open sores. You 0:06:08.839 --> 0:06:12.479 had a nasty smell because you were riding from the 0:06:12.520 --> 0:06:17.520 inside out. Your breath was awful, it was gruesome. Purple splotches. 0:06:17.920 --> 0:06:20.640 God's tokens, right, Yeah, they call them God's tokens because 0:06:20.760 --> 0:06:23.560 once you got these, that means God's gonna take you 0:06:23.640 --> 0:06:27.520 off the earth pretty soon. That's God's token. Fevers that 0:06:27.560 --> 0:06:32.400 could fry your brain, send you into delirium, vomiting, coughing 0:06:32.440 --> 0:06:37.440 up blood, blood, and plus using I've already said it's 0:06:37.480 --> 0:06:40.560 worth twice. So um, those are some of the symptoms. 0:06:40.640 --> 0:06:44.159 And once you start having these symptoms, you are pretty 0:06:44.200 --> 0:06:46.920 much done for within a matter of days. Right, and 0:06:47.000 --> 0:06:50.600 so in our modern day, it takes a little while 0:06:50.720 --> 0:06:54.520 to bury somebody, even with this machinery that we used 0:06:54.520 --> 0:07:00.200 to to dig modern graves um, but back and it 0:07:00.240 --> 0:07:02.719 took even longer to dig a grave, to hold the 0:07:02.760 --> 0:07:06.479 service to bury somebody. And when people die within days 0:07:06.560 --> 0:07:08.680 and suddenly there was like a third of the population 0:07:08.760 --> 0:07:12.760 dying off. There was no time to bury anybody, no space. 0:07:13.240 --> 0:07:17.480 There's literally stacking up dogs, eating corpses. It saysn't here 0:07:17.600 --> 0:07:23.200 children hungry ChIL babies beside their dead mothers. Yeah, Molly 0:07:23.320 --> 0:07:28.840 Edmans really when they wrote this man Um. Yes, but 0:07:28.960 --> 0:07:30.720 that's the truth. I mean, that was crazy. That was 0:07:30.760 --> 0:07:32.960 the raw truth. That was an ugly, ugly, ugly scene. 0:07:32.960 --> 0:07:35.200 And of course anyone who see Monty Python knows that 0:07:35.240 --> 0:07:38.360 there are people who operated carts that banged on the pot. 0:07:38.400 --> 0:07:42.040 Since I bring out your dead, yeah, and well we'll 0:07:42.040 --> 0:07:45.280 get into the flinging. Of course it is too. Well, 0:07:45.320 --> 0:07:47.440 let's get into the flinging because that's kind of how 0:07:47.440 --> 0:07:49.680 it started. Um. And first I want to point out 0:07:50.040 --> 0:07:53.920 the Black Death, you know, gripped Europe. It did not 0:07:54.080 --> 0:07:58.840 only impact Europe. It's so funny, it's so eurocentric the 0:07:58.920 --> 0:08:01.680 way we approached the Black Death. It started in the 0:08:01.680 --> 0:08:06.120 Gobi Desert sometime in the late thirteen twenties in China. 0:08:06.760 --> 0:08:10.040 China lost thirty five million people in the fourteenth century 0:08:10.240 --> 0:08:13.240 from the Black Death. You know, no one ever mentioned 0:08:13.640 --> 0:08:16.080 They always hear about the Europe the Black Death in Europe, 0:08:16.240 --> 0:08:19.360 so it was localized and it was actually in in 0:08:19.640 --> 0:08:24.160 Asia and Central Asia, um for a decade or two. Um. 0:08:24.200 --> 0:08:27.800 But they blame it pretty squarely on the Genoese for 0:08:27.880 --> 0:08:31.320 bringing it to Europe. Right, yes, how did the Genoese 0:08:31.320 --> 0:08:34.680 get it? Well? In thirteen seven in Kafa, which is 0:08:34.679 --> 0:08:38.160 modern day Ukraine. It was a Genoese trading post. They 0:08:38.160 --> 0:08:42.080 were attacked by the Tartar army. Uh. Tartars start to 0:08:42.120 --> 0:08:44.400 die off by the plague, and the Genoese are like, 0:08:44.920 --> 0:08:49.760 sweet God as punishing our enemies and they're dying, Let's 0:08:49.760 --> 0:08:52.640 have a big party and celebrate. And then the Tartars 0:08:52.679 --> 0:08:54.920 are like, well, we're gonna start flinging our dead corpses 0:08:54.920 --> 0:08:57.480 over the wall at you because the smell is so awful. 0:08:57.559 --> 0:09:00.160 You will die from the smell. They weren't two far. 0:09:00.320 --> 0:09:02.360 It was a stupid idea, but stupid idea of what 0:09:02.400 --> 0:09:05.120 at work, because they actually what they were doing. What 0:09:05.160 --> 0:09:08.959 they were doing was germ warfare, very early germ warfare. Right. 0:09:09.000 --> 0:09:11.040 They had it wrong though they thought it was a smell. 0:09:11.360 --> 0:09:16.120 Actually it was this pestilence, and so the Genoese you know, said, oh, 0:09:16.120 --> 0:09:17.600 we need to get rid of these nasty bodies. But 0:09:17.600 --> 0:09:19.280 it was too late. They were infected by that point. 0:09:20.280 --> 0:09:24.679 The Genoese fled to Sicily, and then from there it 0:09:24.760 --> 0:09:28.240 took two pass one. Uh where was the first one? 0:09:28.559 --> 0:09:31.640 The well? The first one went up through um Austria 0:09:31.760 --> 0:09:35.600 and Germany, and then the second path went through Um 0:09:35.640 --> 0:09:38.959 Italy to France to the UK. Yes, at a speed 0:09:39.080 --> 0:09:41.439 which doesn't sound fast, but it really is. If you're 0:09:41.440 --> 0:09:44.319 talking about black death, about two and a half miles 0:09:44.320 --> 0:09:46.560 a day. And not only is it fast like even 0:09:46.640 --> 0:09:49.800 by today's standards, this is before This is when people 0:09:49.840 --> 0:09:52.240 were riding horses and carts and the two a half 0:09:52.920 --> 0:09:57.360 says real, it's lightning fastest trained fast for that time. Yeah, yeah, 0:09:57.440 --> 0:09:59.559 Why is it called the black death? Actually, do you 0:09:59.600 --> 0:10:03.199 know this? I do, So there's a there's a mistranslation. 0:10:03.280 --> 0:10:07.320 At some point, well back in the day, people called 0:10:07.320 --> 0:10:11.839 that the big death or the great mortality, the big death, 0:10:11.960 --> 0:10:13.719 that's bad. That's what they called it as it as 0:10:13.720 --> 0:10:16.480 it was happening, right and then um later on it 0:10:16.559 --> 0:10:20.480 came to be known as the um ultra morse, which 0:10:20.559 --> 0:10:26.760 is Latin for terrible death or black death. At some 0:10:26.800 --> 0:10:29.280 point in time, somebody decided that they liked the black 0:10:29.440 --> 0:10:33.559 death better. Uh, and sometime in the eighteenth century when 0:10:33.559 --> 0:10:38.160 they were using it to differentiate them Plague of London 0:10:38.400 --> 0:10:43.480 in sixteen sixty five, But they mistranslated. It wasn't originally 0:10:43.480 --> 0:10:47.319 called the black death or the um terrible death. It 0:10:47.360 --> 0:10:49.720 was called the Big Death. And then it just kind 0:10:49.720 --> 0:10:52.800 of went from there all right. Well, at the time, 0:10:53.679 --> 0:10:57.600 King Philip the sixth of France turned it over to 0:10:57.640 --> 0:10:59.880 the Paris College of Physicians, who were they were like 0:11:00.800 --> 0:11:03.720 the Mayo Clinic of the time, and they said, here, 0:11:03.840 --> 0:11:06.240 we need to figure out what this is. What is it? 0:11:06.400 --> 0:11:09.080 Smartest doctors in the world, and they says, we know, 0:11:09.200 --> 0:11:11.120 we figured it out. It's all here on the report. 0:11:11.679 --> 0:11:14.160 This is uh, this happened when Saturn and Jupiter and 0:11:14.280 --> 0:11:19.240 Mars lined up in Aquarius and Jupiter's roll wet and hot, 0:11:19.280 --> 0:11:21.600 and it soaked up the evil vapors from the Earth 0:11:21.640 --> 0:11:24.880 and Mars is dry, so it exploded those vapors, and 0:11:24.960 --> 0:11:28.120 now it is a fog of death. And they very 0:11:28.120 --> 0:11:31.360 smugly pinpointed the time that it happened one pm on 0:11:31.480 --> 0:11:37.280 March and they just slicked their heads like but they 0:11:37.280 --> 0:11:39.880 did say it was a fog of death. My guess 0:11:39.920 --> 0:11:42.760 is that it was probably pretty foggy for some reason, 0:11:42.800 --> 0:11:45.720 some weather system happened, or they were onto something like 0:11:45.840 --> 0:11:51.160 it was being transmitted through the air somehow, which you know, 0:11:51.320 --> 0:11:53.240 they might have been actually onto something there with an 0:11:53.240 --> 0:11:58.800 airborne pathogen. Possibly. Instead they went with the fog of death. 0:11:58.880 --> 0:12:01.520 From the planets aligning. And another term for a fog 0:12:01.520 --> 0:12:04.160 of death is a miasma. It's a corrupted bit of air. 0:12:05.040 --> 0:12:10.240 And this is what Europe went with, right, Yeah, like, okay, 0:12:10.280 --> 0:12:12.679 well these are the smartest guys as far as medicine goes. 0:12:12.760 --> 0:12:17.560 They have the longest crow'sbeak masks of anybody. Um, and 0:12:17.720 --> 0:12:19.720 we're gonna go with this fog of death thing, So 0:12:19.760 --> 0:12:22.240 how do we combat it? And what they figured out was, well, 0:12:22.320 --> 0:12:25.400 since you're breathing this fog, you got to keep the 0:12:25.400 --> 0:12:27.560 fog at bay. And one good way to do that 0:12:27.720 --> 0:12:31.679 is to fight fog with fire smoke. So there were 0:12:31.679 --> 0:12:36.160 fires everywhere. Yeah, they were recommended to burn um aromatic wood, 0:12:36.200 --> 0:12:39.200 so people would and people even carry this stuff around rosemary, 0:12:39.280 --> 0:12:43.040 amber and musk. The Pope even stood between two fires 0:12:43.040 --> 0:12:45.600 when he addressed people. Yeah, they kept them burning on 0:12:46.040 --> 0:12:51.560 the street corners. Um. And then there were the fact 0:12:51.600 --> 0:12:53.960 that it was coming from the south and it was 0:12:53.960 --> 0:12:58.600 a fog of death. They started putting glass in their 0:12:58.720 --> 0:13:01.560 southern windows so that the southern wing couldn't penetrate it. 0:13:01.640 --> 0:13:04.040 See that kind of smart there it is. They weren't 0:13:04.040 --> 0:13:06.520 all hokey. Now, some that seemed kind of smart. What 0:13:06.600 --> 0:13:14.000 didn't seem very smart was don't bathe don't have physical intimacy, 0:13:14.160 --> 0:13:16.520 although it's a good way to spread disease. So maybe 0:13:16.520 --> 0:13:19.560 they're onto something there. Um, don't sleep during the daytime, 0:13:19.880 --> 0:13:23.320 avoid sad thoughts to spreading it. They're like, just don't 0:13:23.360 --> 0:13:26.959 be lazy. Yeah, yeah, avoid sad thoughts about disease. There's 0:13:27.000 --> 0:13:29.199 something to that if you believe in the mind. Uh, 0:13:29.440 --> 0:13:33.480 if you believe in positive psychology exactly. So some of 0:13:33.480 --> 0:13:35.560 the little hokey there was a little substance to a 0:13:35.600 --> 0:13:38.280 bit of it. Um, I have a little cocktail tidbit 0:13:38.320 --> 0:13:42.400 for you, though, so awesome. I don't know. The word 0:13:42.440 --> 0:13:46.400 quarantine actually comes from the Black Death in Venice, Italy. 0:13:47.120 --> 0:13:49.120 They were pretty smart and they said, you know what, 0:13:49.120 --> 0:13:51.320 we should start isolating some of these ships of people 0:13:51.360 --> 0:13:53.560 that are coming in, not let them come on land 0:13:53.640 --> 0:13:55.680 until we know that no one on board is is sick. 0:13:56.160 --> 0:13:57.920 So let's do this for like thirty days. And then 0:13:57.960 --> 0:13:59.600 they went, now that's not long enough. It's let's do 0:13:59.640 --> 0:14:07.760 it for four days, forty days or qua quaranti quarantine. 0:14:08.200 --> 0:14:11.240 That's where the word came from. Well, it's not as 0:14:11.280 --> 0:14:14.199 much of a stretch of somebody. Besides Chuck is pronouncing it. 0:14:14.640 --> 0:14:17.320 But yes, that is where quarantine. Look at it. It 0:14:17.320 --> 0:14:20.560 looks like they were quarantine. Yeah, so that's pretty smart too. 0:14:20.560 --> 0:14:23.680 There were some smart people. Still, six of the population 0:14:23.720 --> 0:14:27.920 of Venice died within I think eighteen months. Yeah, so 0:14:27.960 --> 0:14:33.360 the quarantine, while practical and useful, you know, didn't protect everybody. Yeah, 0:14:33.360 --> 0:14:35.640 and you know, we don't know what the doctors were 0:14:35.680 --> 0:14:38.440 doing that much because all we have here is just 0:14:38.920 --> 0:14:42.360 recorded documents of what was going on. Well there there 0:14:42.400 --> 0:14:46.720 there wasn't even documentation. It was popular writers, church writers. 0:14:46.920 --> 0:14:48.800 It wasn't like science journals. I mean, not a lot 0:14:48.800 --> 0:14:51.240 of people knew how to read and write during this time, 0:14:51.240 --> 0:14:53.880 and the ones who did normally were affiliated with the church, 0:14:53.960 --> 0:14:56.440 so they would have had a very religious view of 0:14:56.440 --> 0:14:59.640 what was going on. Right. Um, they're probably blood letting 0:14:59.760 --> 0:15:02.640 the yeah, the like the physicians that were working the 0:15:02.680 --> 0:15:07.200 Crow's mass guys um were uh, blood letting. They were 0:15:07.360 --> 0:15:11.360 um opening up these bu bos, which is it's almost 0:15:11.400 --> 0:15:17.320 like a textual representation of a pussy boo. They would 0:15:17.320 --> 0:15:20.720 open these and drain them because that made sense to 0:15:20.760 --> 0:15:24.960 get rid of whatever is in there. I guess very smart. Yeah, Um, 0:15:25.000 --> 0:15:30.280 we still do that today, Poppins. It's yeah every Tuesday. Uh. 0:15:30.840 --> 0:15:32.920 Religion comes into play pretty heavily there because a lot 0:15:32.960 --> 0:15:35.640 of people said, you know, let's let's turn to God 0:15:35.920 --> 0:15:38.840 and pray for help. Well, a lot of people thought 0:15:38.880 --> 0:15:41.720 that this was punishment from God. Oh yeah, the flagellents, 0:15:42.160 --> 0:15:44.480 so only he could do anything about it or she 0:15:44.720 --> 0:15:48.760 depending in New York and um, so yes, the flagillents, 0:15:48.840 --> 0:15:52.040 chuck take it. The fligillents of Germany. Yeah, the Brotherhood 0:15:52.040 --> 0:15:56.240 of the flood Flagellents had our vigilance. Flagelence had already 0:15:56.240 --> 0:16:00.480 been around, not flagilens though, no very big difference. They're 0:16:00.520 --> 0:16:02.520 already around. But they rose up, like you said, in 0:16:02.520 --> 0:16:06.000 Germany the in the mid thirteen forties, and they thought 0:16:06.000 --> 0:16:07.840 it was punishment from God. And they thought, you know what, 0:16:07.840 --> 0:16:09.760 we're gonna do something about it. So you've heard of 0:16:09.800 --> 0:16:11.920 self flagellation, that's where it comes from. They would walk 0:16:11.960 --> 0:16:16.800 barefoot across Europe whipping themselves with their little whatever cat 0:16:16.800 --> 0:16:22.000 of nine tales. Uh, scourges, scourges like that had like 0:16:22.080 --> 0:16:25.880 sharp kind of barbed ends. Uh. It didn't work, though, 0:16:27.320 --> 0:16:29.560 and a lot of people turned against God because of that, 0:16:29.960 --> 0:16:33.240 they also killed a lot of Jews. The Flagellnce did 0:16:33.560 --> 0:16:38.920 a flagelence. Yeah, highly they killed Jews. They would kill 0:16:39.080 --> 0:16:42.200 clergy that opposed them, except for the Pope, and the 0:16:42.240 --> 0:16:45.640 Pope was like, you're officially denounced, and I think thirteen 0:16:45.720 --> 0:16:48.480 forty nine and that was it for the flagelence, although 0:16:48.840 --> 0:16:52.400 they popped up again in later um plugues and pestilences, 0:16:53.800 --> 0:16:57.400 but they stopped for the black death, like immediately when 0:16:57.440 --> 0:17:00.280 they denounced them. Well, they killed Jews because it was 0:17:00.440 --> 0:17:03.160 a pretty bad rumor going around that the Jews had 0:17:03.280 --> 0:17:06.560 uh were poisoning the water supply, and because at the 0:17:06.600 --> 0:17:09.800 time Christians and Jews lived separately, largely a lot of 0:17:09.880 --> 0:17:14.119 Jewish Jewish communities were effectively quarantined so they didn't get 0:17:14.280 --> 0:17:17.080 hit as hard. So all of a sudden, Jews are 0:17:17.640 --> 0:17:19.719 I don't know prosperings the right word, but they're not 0:17:19.920 --> 0:17:23.760 dying like the Christians are, so so that Christians started 0:17:23.760 --> 0:17:27.600 burning them as they started burning them alive. Apparently in Strasbourg, 0:17:28.280 --> 0:17:33.000 the Germany was more Jews died in Germany than anywhere 0:17:33.040 --> 0:17:36.159 else um at the hands of Christians who were upset 0:17:36.200 --> 0:17:43.040 about the plague um and in Strasburg in uh, let's see, um, 0:17:43.080 --> 0:17:46.480 I think thirteen forty eight, on one day, two Jews 0:17:46.480 --> 0:17:49.679 were burned alive at the stake, just that one city 0:17:49.680 --> 0:17:52.840 on that one day. And apparently entire communities used to 0:17:52.840 --> 0:17:55.560 be walled up and set on fire with everybody, or 0:17:55.680 --> 0:17:58.320 Jews would convert Christianity on the spot, or they would 0:17:58.320 --> 0:18:01.160 set their own houses on fire. Yeah, which is kind 0:18:01.160 --> 0:18:04.440 of sensible, like, oh, look, my house is already on fire. 0:18:04.600 --> 0:18:07.520 Better I should probably take off, keep on walking, see 0:18:07.520 --> 0:18:10.359 you guys later. Well, a lot of Jews fled to 0:18:10.359 --> 0:18:13.480 the countryside, didn't they too, because they were able to. Yeah, 0:18:13.640 --> 0:18:15.080 good for them, is what I said. Well, I don't 0:18:15.080 --> 0:18:17.200 think it was just Jews. I think anybody who had 0:18:17.280 --> 0:18:20.399 the means of going to the countryside, which is crazy 0:18:20.440 --> 0:18:22.840 because I mean, like going to the countryside means like 0:18:22.920 --> 0:18:25.160 stepping out your back door. I thought in like the 0:18:25.200 --> 0:18:30.000 fourteenth century, but apparently there were still the wealthy went 0:18:30.040 --> 0:18:31.679 out to the country once in a while, and they 0:18:31.680 --> 0:18:34.960 would Yeah. So it was needless to say, it was 0:18:35.000 --> 0:18:39.160 a really rough few years for Europe um and by 0:18:40.160 --> 0:18:45.800 fifty two it was largely gone. Yeah, it just took off. 0:18:46.520 --> 0:18:48.600 But what I mean there was. It's not like all right, 0:18:48.920 --> 0:18:51.720 black desk on, everything's cool now. They were like huge, 0:18:51.760 --> 0:18:57.280 huge effects. Apparently the um self flagellation worked, right, Yeah, 0:18:57.680 --> 0:18:59.520 sure that's what it was. Well, yeah, you have to 0:18:59.560 --> 0:19:03.119 imagine a third, right, So that means that between you, 0:19:03.359 --> 0:19:08.840 me and Jerry, one of us dies. That's not necessarily true. 0:19:09.320 --> 0:19:13.960 I'd set myself on fire. Um okay, so then two 0:19:14.000 --> 0:19:18.760 of us would have died, right, Um, I mean a third, 0:19:18.760 --> 0:19:24.320 a third of of this this population within like seriously, 0:19:24.359 --> 0:19:29.280 like two years is just gone. People are um being 0:19:29.359 --> 0:19:32.040 eaten by dogs or corpses are being eaten by dogs 0:19:32.040 --> 0:19:35.679 in the streets. Families are just completely abandoning one another 0:19:35.680 --> 0:19:39.280 once they get sick. The whole um social psyche, the 0:19:39.320 --> 0:19:42.639 collective psyche of Europe just kind of crumble a little bit. 0:19:42.680 --> 0:19:45.400 It took a pretty big ding. And one of the 0:19:45.440 --> 0:19:48.080 places it took that ding was in religion. A lot 0:19:48.160 --> 0:19:52.399 of heretical society sprung up because it was like either 0:19:52.520 --> 0:19:55.240 this was your work, God, or you didn't do anything 0:19:55.240 --> 0:19:58.680 to help us, so we're not coming to church anymore. 0:19:59.240 --> 0:20:02.760 Instead of being really thankful that they survived, people uh 0:20:03.040 --> 0:20:07.680 partied like it was basically crazy parties. Yeah, a lot 0:20:07.720 --> 0:20:14.000 of debauchery, lots of debauchery. Um. Uh. There was an 0:20:14.000 --> 0:20:17.240 economic impact to a huge one. Well yeah, if half 0:20:17.280 --> 0:20:19.680 your sorry, if a third of the workforce is gone, 0:20:21.160 --> 0:20:24.240 you've got no one working, So labor is gonna skyrocket. 0:20:24.480 --> 0:20:26.600 The price of labor is the price of labor is 0:20:27.160 --> 0:20:31.359 cost of goods food, you know, the little silver lining. 0:20:31.359 --> 0:20:34.280 Their food was in supply because there weren't as many 0:20:34.280 --> 0:20:38.720 people to eat it. Exactly. Sadly, the other cool thing 0:20:38.760 --> 0:20:42.960 does it's potentially we saw the birth of modern science 0:20:42.960 --> 0:20:45.960 and medicine because of the Black Death. Because the leaders 0:20:46.840 --> 0:20:50.320 we're like, you know, this whole planet's aligning thing was 0:20:50.359 --> 0:20:52.560 pretty stupid now that we look back at it, So 0:20:52.960 --> 0:20:56.040 why don't we found some schools and do some real 0:20:56.280 --> 0:20:59.320 research based on physical science and give that a whirl. 0:21:00.560 --> 0:21:03.479 And it started. It worked, which was some kind of 0:21:03.480 --> 0:21:06.639 ironic as well, because the population was so decimated that 0:21:06.720 --> 0:21:09.199 it even after they had this idea, they had to 0:21:09.240 --> 0:21:12.159 wait a little while to reopen schools because they couldn't 0:21:12.200 --> 0:21:16.840 staff them. Oh yeah, um. And also, chuck, there were 0:21:16.880 --> 0:21:20.399 there was an almost complete loss of any illusions about 0:21:20.560 --> 0:21:23.760 death and whether or not it's coming for you. Um, 0:21:23.800 --> 0:21:28.080 there's a whole allegory and art that um that sprang 0:21:28.160 --> 0:21:30.840 up at the time called Dance macab which is the 0:21:30.920 --> 0:21:34.119 dance of death, which is basically like you know, showing 0:21:34.520 --> 0:21:38.880 living people and skeletons, you know, working side by side 0:21:39.040 --> 0:21:42.639 or um hanging out or partying together or whatever. And 0:21:42.680 --> 0:21:44.560 the point of that is that you know, death can 0:21:44.600 --> 0:21:47.320 come at any time, and it's coming for everybody. So 0:21:47.560 --> 0:21:49.600 art and poetry and things like that just took a 0:21:49.640 --> 0:21:52.600 real down return there for a while because that was 0:21:52.680 --> 0:21:55.680 clearly what everyone was thinking about at the time. That's right, Chuck, 0:21:56.960 --> 0:21:59.000 Uh what caused it? See? This is where I get 0:21:59.040 --> 0:22:03.240 a little, um, a little confused, because there's conflicting information 0:22:03.320 --> 0:22:05.600 even to this day. Well it's um one of those 0:22:05.600 --> 0:22:08.359 things where we thought we figured it out, but uh, 0:22:08.800 --> 0:22:13.960 modern techniques and modern investigation have kind of led us 0:22:14.000 --> 0:22:16.840 to think, is you like that? I have have led 0:22:16.920 --> 0:22:20.440 us to think that maybe that first idea hasn't wasn't right. 0:22:20.960 --> 0:22:24.320 The first idea came out of the third pandemic, which 0:22:24.680 --> 0:22:29.320 was in eighteen nine in Hong Kong and India. Right, Um, 0:22:29.359 --> 0:22:38.320 and two bacteriologists Alexander Jerson and Uh Shibasaburo Kitasato, thanks Um. 0:22:38.359 --> 0:22:43.199 They worked independently and isolated the cause of that third pandemic, 0:22:43.280 --> 0:22:46.440 and it is what we know today as bubonic plague. 0:22:46.720 --> 0:22:50.960 It's a bacterium called your Cina pestis um, named after 0:22:51.280 --> 0:22:55.679 Alexander Jerson right um, and it it lives in the 0:22:55.760 --> 0:23:00.560 four gut of fleas, rodent fleas that feast on rat. Yeah, 0:23:00.640 --> 0:23:04.800 this was interesting, I thought, because the flea bites the 0:23:04.840 --> 0:23:08.879 regular fleet um bites rat and drinks blood, and it's like, 0:23:08.960 --> 0:23:14.480 oh man, that was fantastic. Uh. If you're infected with 0:23:14.560 --> 0:23:17.800 the your sena, you're sending a pestus and your fleet. 0:23:18.480 --> 0:23:21.159 You bite the rodent and you eat the blood, but 0:23:21.200 --> 0:23:22.960 it gets stuck in your foregut, and so you never 0:23:23.520 --> 0:23:26.960 feel that quench of that tasty, tasty blood in your 0:23:26.960 --> 0:23:29.359 stomach if your flee. So you keep biting more and 0:23:29.400 --> 0:23:32.360 more rodents and infecting more and more roes because you're, 0:23:33.160 --> 0:23:35.480 like we talked about with the fleas, regurgitating it back 0:23:35.480 --> 0:23:38.000 onto rodents, and all of a sudden you're killing all 0:23:38.000 --> 0:23:40.159 these rodents and then when there are no more rodents 0:23:40.200 --> 0:23:43.800 and the fleas will go to people. And so they 0:23:43.800 --> 0:23:47.560 thought that's how it was spread, which makes sense because 0:23:47.560 --> 0:23:51.720