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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how

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Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.

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Speaker 1: I'm editor Can't just gives in join my staff writer

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Speaker 1: Jake Graph either can't. Every now and then, just as

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Speaker 1: a treat for you really special listeners out there, we

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Speaker 1: like to discuss something really grizzly and maccab and in

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Speaker 1: the past it's spent towards your devices or or really

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Speaker 1: bloody wars. And today we have another trait for everyone,

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Speaker 1: the Black Death. It's true and I like this one

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Speaker 1: a lot better than the other very grizzly ones we've

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Speaker 1: talked about before. I don't know why, but it's it's

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Speaker 1: a really interesting topic to me. I guess it's just

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Speaker 1: that the shear, the sheer like effect of the Black

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Speaker 1: Death and how many people did kill because if you

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Speaker 1: look at the stats, like the one and most often

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Speaker 1: quoted is that you're lost a third of its population

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Speaker 1: in the Black Death and this was only in like

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Speaker 1: the short period that's referred to as a Black Death,

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Speaker 1: and the actual play actually you know, lived on after that.

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Speaker 1: So the Black Death we're talking thirty seven to thirteen

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Speaker 1: fifty one, and there are geneticists today who are studying

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Speaker 1: the effects of the Black the Black Death, and they

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Speaker 1: say that England's population especially one of the reasons there's

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Speaker 1: so little genetic diversity there is because of the Black Death,

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Speaker 1: and other parts of Europe were still trying to catch up,

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Speaker 1: and it took a long time to recover from the

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Speaker 1: effects of losing twenty five million people. That's, like you said,

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Speaker 1: a third of the population of Europe. We're talking about

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Speaker 1: all the way from the Mediterranean countries to the Scandinavian ones,

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Speaker 1: even to parts of Russia and even parts of Africa

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Speaker 1: where trade routes were established. That's right, and that leads

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Speaker 1: us to going back to the beginning of how the

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Speaker 1: Black Death began. And they believed today that it started

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Speaker 1: in Asia. The first case came from the Mongol territory,

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Speaker 1: and they can trace that the cases came up through

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Speaker 1: the trade route. So obviously people going back and forth,

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Speaker 1: we're carrying this disease and spreading it um and eventually

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Speaker 1: made its way to Europe. And it's pretty interesting story

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Speaker 1: the way it got there because there was this trading

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Speaker 1: post called Kafa and what is now Ukraine at least

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Speaker 1: where the Genoese were using it and they actually got

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Speaker 1: attacked by the Tartars. So when the Tars attacked, they

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Speaker 1: actually contracted the disease UM in the process because the

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Speaker 1: Genoese were were inflicted with it, and so the Tars

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Speaker 1: started dying. And at first the Genoese were like, yeah,

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Speaker 1: this is God, you know, saying, you know, we won

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Speaker 1: and we're on God's side. But then they started realizing

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Speaker 1: that that the disease was spreading towards them, and the

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Speaker 1: Tars actually launched. I love this. They had upholded. Um,

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Speaker 1: a rotting body was running from the plague into the

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Speaker 1: town of Genoees, so that it spread the disease towards

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Speaker 1: them and more. Yeah, and the Tarters thought that certainly

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Speaker 1: the malhuterous smell emanating from the rotting corpses would be

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Speaker 1: enough to drive them out. Well, for one, yeah, it did,

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Speaker 1: but for two also, it disseminated this awful, awful disease.

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Speaker 1: So the Genuee get back to Italy essentially, and we

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Speaker 1: can trace how the Black Death went on its major

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Speaker 1: trade routes around Europe. We know that um, some of

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Speaker 1: the the bigger paths were from Italy and then to

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Speaker 1: Austria and Germany and then from France to England and Ireland,

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Speaker 1: and then eventually by forty nine and fifty we see

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Speaker 1: that it reaches parts of Russia and then even parts

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Speaker 1: of Africa along these routes. So, Black Death, why is

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Speaker 1: it so bad? While we will tell you. Um, you

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Speaker 1: would get these purple splotches on your body, and they

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Speaker 1: referred to them as God's tokens, because once your body

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Speaker 1: became infected with these little purple splotches or black spots,

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Speaker 1: it was a sign from God that your time was

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Speaker 1: almost up. And if there were a blessing behind the

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Speaker 1: Black Death, it was that it killed quickly. It didn't

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Speaker 1: kill softly. It killed quickly, that's true, and people wouldn't

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Speaker 1: They would also get these tumors. They were basically the

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Speaker 1: size of eggs or or even apples next, yeah, they were.

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Speaker 1: Sometimes they were so big that your head would get

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Speaker 1: pushed to the side and you couldn't even cock it

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Speaker 1: upright again because it would just be completely turned over

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Speaker 1: from this giant, giant node of of pus and grossness.

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Speaker 1: And there were different variations on the Black Death. Some

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Speaker 1: people would get on like a bubonic form of the plague,

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Speaker 1: and they would be taken with trembling and chills and fever,

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Speaker 1: and then some who got the pneumonic form be coughing

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Speaker 1: up blood and your body would just be rotting from

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Speaker 1: the inside out until you would have really foul breath

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Speaker 1: and your body it would just just nastiness with seep

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Speaker 1: from your pores, and you just didn't want to be

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Speaker 1: around anybody at all. So you would see pestlen's houses

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Speaker 1: where people would go to die, or your neighbor's helps

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Speaker 1: would be covered with a black ex over the door

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Speaker 1: to show that there were people inside who'd been afflicted

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Speaker 1: with the black Death. Husbands would leave their wives, babies

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Speaker 1: would be abandoned. Sometimes entire villages would just be shut down.

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Speaker 1: That's right. And UM, this was partially a problem because

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Speaker 1: they didn't quite know how it was spread. And even

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Speaker 1: to this day it kind of eludes a lot of

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Speaker 1: historians and people studying this and how fast it did spread,

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Speaker 1: because it did spread so fast that it doesn't really

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Speaker 1: make sense. Um, because people didn't travel as much as

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Speaker 1: they do today. And Uh, anyway, to get back to

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Speaker 1: what caused it, people weren't sure. And UM, a lot

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Speaker 1: of people attributed it immediately to God's wrath, like God

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Speaker 1: wants to inflict this on us for something we did.

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Speaker 1: And one group that came out of this idea are

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Speaker 1: called the Flagelence. And this UH is a group of

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Speaker 1: people who at the time, I believe the plague was

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Speaker 1: certainly a consequence of their sins, and they would start

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Speaker 1: um basically inflicting UM suffering and and UH scourges on

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Speaker 1: themselves so that they could make up for their sins.

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Speaker 1: And this comes from the idea of redemptive suffering, which

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Speaker 1: you know still holds a place in Catholic teaching. But

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Speaker 1: the Flagelence took it way you know, they out to

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Speaker 1: left field. These Flagelens were seen as sort of way

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Speaker 1: too out there, and I believe the Vatican basically said, like,

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Speaker 1: you know, keep it down, and they eventually disappeared almost overnight.

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Speaker 1: But there are lots of other theories about what caused

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Speaker 1: it in the first place. UM. As far as Santita

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Speaker 1: sation goes, during the fourteenth century, well, there was none.

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Speaker 1: It was awful. People would throw their food scraps into

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Speaker 1: the street. There would be you know, excrement from animals

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Speaker 1: and from humans, and it was just everywhere. And we

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Speaker 1: know that um waste like that attracts vermin, and rats

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Speaker 1: were a really big carrier of fleas. So scientists today

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Speaker 1: have a theory about these these fleas and the rodents

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Speaker 1: that carried them, and the idea was that um a

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Speaker 1: flea would bite of rodent that had this bad bacteria

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Speaker 1: and it's blood, the bacterium that ultimately led to the

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Speaker 1: black death, and because it would infect the flee somehow

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Speaker 1: we get stuck in the four gut, which was the

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Speaker 1: the upper part of the flee stomach and essentially the

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Speaker 1: flee almost the way I think if it is like

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Speaker 1: the lap band system, if you guys have seen commercials

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Speaker 1: for that, you know how it cuts off part of

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Speaker 1: your stomach so you're not hungry, but had the opposite

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Speaker 1: effect that the top part would get full, but the

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Speaker 1: bottom part would still be wide open for more food.

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Speaker 1: So the flea would go searching for more food and

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Speaker 1: feast upon more and more rats, and it just could

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Speaker 1: never get enough. So eventually the rats are being infected

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Speaker 1: by these bad fleas with bad blood and they would

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Speaker 1: all die, and then the fleas needed more fodder. They

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Speaker 1: would start latching onto humans. And because that the rats

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Speaker 1: and the fleaves were said plentiful the Black Death could

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Speaker 1: spread up to two and a half miles that's four

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Speaker 1: kilometers for all of you out there per day, So

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Speaker 1: it was incredibly fast, incredibly swift, and you died really

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Speaker 1: fast from it too, that's right. And um, this theory

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Speaker 1: about the fleet to rat thing, it kind of might

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Speaker 1: explain why people blame Jews at the time, and there

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Speaker 1: were lots of there. There was a general feeling of

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Speaker 1: anti Semitism at the time, obviously, but people actually believe

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Speaker 1: that the Jews were intentionally tainting the water supply with

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Speaker 1: the plague. And um, this is of course not true,

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Speaker 1: but people believe it, and today people think and perhaps

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Speaker 1: what actually happened, supposedly Jews actually died and fewer numbers

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Speaker 1: in the Christians may not be true, but at least

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Speaker 1: it seemed that way at the time, and it makes

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Speaker 1: sense because the Jews and Christians had such desperate etiologies.

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Speaker 1: They typically didn't live together exactly. They were isolated. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: they were, and it kind of worked in the Jew's

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Speaker 1: favor at first, at least because they had their own quarantine.

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Speaker 1: That's right. And not only that, but there are theories

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Speaker 1: that the Jewish people had actually um more advanced ideas

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Speaker 1: of hygiene at the time, and so this helped them.

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Speaker 1: And also I remember hearing the theory when when I

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Speaker 1: was in school that Jews actually were more likely to

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Speaker 1: keep cats, and cats would scare away or kill the

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Speaker 1: rats that were likely to carry the fleas. Yeah, so

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Speaker 1: that was one theory. So anyway to get back to

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Speaker 1: any Semitism that was going on at the time, Uh,

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Speaker 1: Jews weren't immune. Obviously many died of the plague, but

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Speaker 1: many were blaming them. So they the Christians who did

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Speaker 1: blame them, uh, would go on these riots and they

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Speaker 1: would even take whole buildings full of Jewish people and

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Speaker 1: burn them to the ground, or they would take individual

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Speaker 1: Jews and burn them at the steak or they would

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Speaker 1: even put them like stuff them into wine caskets and

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Speaker 1: throw them into the river. And as if we're shadowing

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Speaker 1: the future, one of the countries that persecuted the Jews

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Speaker 1: the most was Germany actually, and we know that, uh,

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Speaker 1: most of the Jews who died during the period of

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Speaker 1: the Black Death, it wasn't due to contracting the disease,

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Speaker 1: but being put to death escapegoats for the plague. Now,

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Speaker 1: if you didn't buy into the idea of fleas and rodents,

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Speaker 1: as many people at the time didn't because mysticism and

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Speaker 1: uh superstition was much more advanced than medicine, they just

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Speaker 1: didn't have that kind of knowledge. Back during the Middle Ages,

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Speaker 1: there was another idea floating around, and this is sort of,

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Speaker 1: you know, sort of crazy, so you guys are gonna

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Speaker 1: have to bear with me. But the thought was that

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Speaker 1: on March Saturn, Jupiter, and Mars were all in aquarious.

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Speaker 1: Now I'm not really familiar with astrology, so I'm not

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Speaker 1: sure where this can know is, but apparently they were

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Speaker 1: all working together, they were all inline and conditions were

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Speaker 1: right before a big reaction to occur. And Jupiter is

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Speaker 1: known as a hot and wet planet and Mars is

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Speaker 1: known as a dry planet. So putter I was able

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Speaker 1: to absorb these evil vapors from the Earth, but Mars

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Speaker 1: sort of um uh re reassimilated them back down to

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Speaker 1: the Earth's atmosphere and specifically over Europe, I guess and

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Speaker 1: spreading what they called a death fog. And people had

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Speaker 1: a lot of different ideas about how to keep out

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Speaker 1: of the way of this death fog, one of which

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Speaker 1: was avoidance, which was pretty smart especially didn't have any

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Speaker 1: preventive medicine, but the others where you didn't eat meat,

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Speaker 1: you didn't eat figs, you didn't exercise, and you didn't

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Speaker 1: have sucks, all great ways to avoid the black death.

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Speaker 1: But also they also said you shouldn't bathe, which I

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Speaker 1: don't know if that helps. Such a good idea. And

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Speaker 1: they called this fog of death miasthma. I believe it

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Speaker 1: was pronounced um. According to a book by Joseph Patrick

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Speaker 1: byrne Uh. They believe that when you were infected with

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Speaker 1: a small amount of this miasma, the body could actually

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Speaker 1: combat it by moving it away to the heart and

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Speaker 1: and other organs that could get rid of or way

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Speaker 1: away from the heart, I should say two organs that

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Speaker 1: could get rid of it. So this ended up being

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Speaker 1: places where like the ears and the armpits and the liver,

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Speaker 1: and these were actually places where bubos would would show up,

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Speaker 1: these marks on your body. And so they believe these

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Speaker 1: these bubos were actually good um, and that when they

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Speaker 1: opened it actually lets out the bad um tainted whatever

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Speaker 1: it is, pus or whatever, and so you would recover

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Speaker 1: after that. But so there was this whole theory of

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Speaker 1: going around about my asthma, even even the Pope subscribed

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Speaker 1: to it. Um he didn't. He was actually an interesting

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Speaker 1: defender of the Jews at this time. He he loved

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Speaker 1: Jews for some reason, and he subscribed to the theory

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Speaker 1: of my asthma and not the idea that Jews poisoned

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Speaker 1: the wells. And so he would actually sit between things

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Speaker 1: of fire. And this was one thing that could actually

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Speaker 1: protect you from the my asthma was burning wood, Yeah, exactly,

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Speaker 1: aromatic woods, things like rose mary in time, and he

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Speaker 1: sort of herb that was very fragrant, and um name

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Speaker 1: was mentioned, this idea of letting out the bad stuff

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Speaker 1: from inside these big sores. And that's why there were

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Speaker 1: some very primitive attempts at Lansing then and blood letting,

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Speaker 1: very primitive. Like I said, medicine, but medicine nonetheless. And

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Speaker 1: that's something that's really interesting. Because after the Black Death

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Speaker 1: phased out, and it did, it eventually phased out and

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Speaker 1: ran its court. Uh, a lot of things happened. And

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Speaker 1: one of the biggest changes was an advancement in education

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Speaker 1: because people saw that before it was really inadequate. What

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Speaker 1: they had superstition was no way to treat a big

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Speaker 1: epidemic like this, they needed serious learning and serious medicines,

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Speaker 1: so was on increase in education. But there were also

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Speaker 1: big changes in the religious and economic sectors of society.

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Speaker 1: For one, Europe in the Middle Ages had been a

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Speaker 1: big sort of feudal system where you know, the service

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Speaker 1: work for the lords and they all shared this land

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Speaker 1: and they all lived in the country and everything was

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Speaker 1: you know, pretty happy, You're lucky for the most part,

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Speaker 1: but so many people had died that there were no

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Speaker 1: more people to really work the land, so the cost

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Speaker 1: of labor had skyrocketed. But there was enough food to

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Speaker 1: go around still and not enough people to eat it,

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Speaker 1: so the cost of food remain the same. So eventually

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Speaker 1: people started moving to where the city in the urban

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Speaker 1: areas really grew up in the feudal system sort of dissipated.

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Speaker 1: And what else was interesting about the religious sectors of

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Speaker 1: society was that if you were still a devout person

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Speaker 1: after you had seen this epidemic come in and wipe

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Speaker 1: out all of your family, then you worshiped in a

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Speaker 1: very small and private chapel. Because on the whole people

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Speaker 1: started engaging and all sorts of debauchery. They would wear,

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Speaker 1: you know, very elaborate clothes, they would eat very expensive foods,

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Speaker 1: they would party, they would drink because the predominant thought

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Speaker 1: was that God had turned his back on society and

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Speaker 1: and people couldn't trust him anymore, so why be devout?

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Speaker 1: That's right. So the Catholic Church a lot of lost

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Speaker 1: a lot of power in that way over over people's

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Speaker 1: personal lives. And um, even like you said, they like

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Speaker 1: they go on on these like debaucherous like parties and things.

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Speaker 1: It also sort of played into the idea of the

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Speaker 1: dons macabre, which was a dance with death kind of

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Speaker 1: and it was kind of a memento more sort of

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Speaker 1: line or that death is is around the corner. And

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Speaker 1: people say that the people at this time, when they're

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Speaker 1: at least immediately after the Black Death, were very preoccupied

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Speaker 1: with the idea, with the idea of death. And it's

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Speaker 1: very understandable. Um, when you think about it, you think

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Speaker 1: of so many people that you would know, so many

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Speaker 1: people in your family who have died at this time,

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Speaker 1: and you would obviously feel all the time like death

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Speaker 1: might be coming for you any moment. And so that

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Speaker 1: the Don's macab could be manifested in several different ways.

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Speaker 1: It was an art form, but underneath that broad umbrella

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Speaker 1: we had a visual arts, theater and music and different

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Speaker 1: ways to express the relationships between the living and the

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Speaker 1: dad and how the living could interact with the dad

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Speaker 1: and so um. Like you said, Candasa did run its course,

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Speaker 1: but it actually it's stuck around in certain places for

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Speaker 1: the next like a few hundred years. There was always

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Speaker 1: at least one town in Europe that was suffering from

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Speaker 1: it at one time for for this period. It phased

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Speaker 1: out a little bit after that, and then by the

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Speaker 1: eighteen hundreds the end actually came back in areas of

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Speaker 1: East Asia. And it was by this time that people

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Speaker 1: were studying it a little bit more closely and knowing

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Speaker 1: a little bit about how bacteria works, and they discovered um,

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Speaker 1: a particular by bacteria that they that they attributed to

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Speaker 1: it UM. And they tried and they felt that they

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Speaker 1: had finally figured out the key to what caused the

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Speaker 1: Black Death in the first place. But there's still a

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Speaker 1: lot of actually controversy to this day about what actually

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Speaker 1: calls it, because a lot of things just don't make

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Speaker 1: sense with the with what accounts were written in the

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Speaker 1: fourteenth century about the Black Death, right, reconciling people's accounts

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Speaker 1: of what they observed and their fellow man versus what

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Speaker 1: the science has discovered about the bacterium today. Right. And

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Speaker 1: it's also tough because the people back then, we can't

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Speaker 1: always trust exactly those accounts because they don't have the

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Speaker 1: same knowledge. They don't have the same terminology as we

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Speaker 1: do in describing medical conditions. So how much can we

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Speaker 1: trust their accounts? You don't know exactly, So that we're

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Speaker 1: working with what we have, and historians and geneticists and epidemiologists,

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Speaker 1: I think they're still researching it. There's still a lot

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Speaker 1: to find out and in nantrim. If you want to

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Speaker 1: know more about epidemics and contagious diseases and historical epidemics,

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Speaker 1: you can find out much more at how stuff works

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Speaker 1: dot com. For more on this and thousands of other topics,

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Speaker 1: visit how stuff works dot com. Let us know what

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Speaker 1: you think, send an email to podcast at how stuff

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Speaker 1: works dot com. M