WEBVTT - SYSK Selects: How the Black Death Worked 0:00:00.960 --> 0:00:03.840 Hey there everyone, it's your old pal Josh and for 0:00:03.920 --> 0:00:07.280 this week's s Y s K Selects, I chose How 0:00:07.360 --> 0:00:10.440 the Black Death Worked. It's a look at a fascinating 0:00:10.520 --> 0:00:13.880 few years when a mystery disease we still don't know 0:00:13.920 --> 0:00:17.680 what it was swept across Europe and Asia and killed 0:00:17.680 --> 0:00:22.799 a significant portion of the world. Check it out and enjoy. 0:00:23.480 --> 0:00:25.759 Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of I 0:00:25.920 --> 0:00:34.800 Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. 0:00:34.840 --> 0:00:37.519 I'm Josh Clark with me as always as Charles W. 0:00:37.720 --> 0:00:40.599 Chuck Bryant, and that makes this stuff you should know 0:00:41.520 --> 0:00:46.120 the podcast, the audio podcast nothing more? Got it? Not 0:00:46.240 --> 0:00:51.839 a lot less then? Uh, comparably sized podcasts. No, No, 0:00:52.040 --> 0:00:53.680 this is chock full of good stuff. This one's gonna 0:00:53.680 --> 0:00:55.800 be a man do you think so? Oh? Yeah, I 0:00:55.840 --> 0:00:57.360 liked it. You like this one? Yeah? I like some 0:00:57.400 --> 0:00:59.480 of the historical stuff we did. Man, I love it, 0:00:59.520 --> 0:01:01.960 you know, as a history major at one point, love 0:01:01.960 --> 0:01:06.120 of history, Yeah, Chuck. Yes, So we're talking about the 0:01:06.120 --> 0:01:11.759 Black Death, Yeah right, not Black Sabbath like death. Well, 0:01:11.800 --> 0:01:13.840 I'm gonna need some more time, okay, so we'll wait, 0:01:13.840 --> 0:01:17.840 hold on, all right, I'm back, Okay, Yes, Okay, you 0:01:18.120 --> 0:01:22.479 understand now what we're talking about, great chuck um. I 0:01:22.520 --> 0:01:25.679 was researching this to find out like, okay, what's newsy 0:01:25.720 --> 0:01:27.360 about the Black Death? Like, how am I going to 0:01:27.440 --> 0:01:30.200 find an intro? I actually found one, really, Yeah, it's 0:01:30.319 --> 0:01:35.240 it's from two thousand six February two thousand and six. Sorry, 0:01:35.319 --> 0:01:37.240 but there was a study that came out of you 0:01:37.319 --> 0:01:40.280 tricked university. Have you ever heard of the Little Ice Age? 0:01:41.280 --> 0:01:46.640 Uh No, there was a period in um world history, 0:01:46.720 --> 0:01:50.720 global history. I think it may have been kind of 0:01:50.800 --> 0:01:55.680 localized to Europe. So let's say European history in about 0:01:55.720 --> 0:02:01.080 the fifteen hundreds where there was this in explicable period 0:02:01.160 --> 0:02:05.240 of cold. Interesting, right, it's called the Little Ice Age, 0:02:05.680 --> 0:02:10.240 harmful cold. It got cold, like our our conception of 0:02:10.320 --> 0:02:13.160 like why you know, Vikings wear pelts and everything, they're 0:02:13.160 --> 0:02:16.200 always walking around it's very cold, not just because they 0:02:16.240 --> 0:02:22.360 live in Scandinavia, but because it was cold. Then okay, 0:02:22.440 --> 0:02:25.280 so this Little Ice Age, like I said, inexplicable. No 0:02:25.280 --> 0:02:28.400 one had any idea why it happened. And these you 0:02:28.520 --> 0:02:34.040 trecked researchers got that got ahold of some tree sample, 0:02:34.160 --> 0:02:40.160 some leaf samples from eras before the Little Ice age 0:02:40.440 --> 0:02:43.640 and after, and they started counting stomas. These are the 0:02:43.639 --> 0:02:46.160 pores on the leaves. The more stonage you have, the 0:02:46.200 --> 0:02:49.560 more carbon dioxide there is in the air. Leaves developed 0:02:49.600 --> 0:02:52.720 these stomas, they can absorb more c O two, right, 0:02:53.200 --> 0:02:56.480 so if so facto, the more stonage you have, the 0:02:56.480 --> 0:02:58.800 more c O two in the atmosphere. And what they 0:02:58.800 --> 0:03:01.200 found by counting these stone Alma's was that there was 0:03:01.240 --> 0:03:04.720 a lot of c O two prior to the thirteen 0:03:04.840 --> 0:03:09.000 forties in Europe. That means that there's not that much 0:03:09.040 --> 0:03:10.960 c O two. You know that there was a lot 0:03:11.040 --> 0:03:13.359 of c O two in the air in the atmosphere. 0:03:14.000 --> 0:03:15.600 One reason there's a lot of c O two is 0:03:15.639 --> 0:03:18.280 because there's not a lot of trees to soak that 0:03:18.360 --> 0:03:21.120 c O two up. One reason there's not a lot 0:03:21.200 --> 0:03:23.520 of trees is because humans are cutting down the trees 0:03:23.600 --> 0:03:30.600 to farm land, right or just stay warm. There's there's 0:03:30.639 --> 0:03:35.080 fewer trees deforestation brought on by human activity. Okay, So 0:03:35.440 --> 0:03:40.480 what they find then is that after fifty roughly, there's 0:03:40.520 --> 0:03:44.160 suddenly fewer stomas, which means that there's less c O 0:03:44.240 --> 0:03:46.600 two in there, which means that there's more trees. Do 0:03:46.600 --> 0:03:50.040 you know, eitherre are more trees, do you. I have 0:03:50.120 --> 0:03:54.040 a pretty good guess it's because in between that time, 0:03:54.200 --> 0:03:57.640 the thirteen forties and the thirteen fifties, the Black Death 0:03:57.720 --> 0:04:02.400 happened and so many people die that it had a 0:04:02.440 --> 0:04:07.280 measurable effect on the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere because 0:04:07.320 --> 0:04:10.160 of not that many trees, and then suddenly lots of 0:04:10.200 --> 0:04:12.960 trees because there was no one to tend this farmland 0:04:13.640 --> 0:04:16.560 in the interesting you know what else. This was a 0:04:16.600 --> 0:04:18.320 tidbit from the end, but we might as well say 0:04:18.320 --> 0:04:20.320 it here. They think that there is a lack of 0:04:20.360 --> 0:04:24.320 genetic diversity in the UK today because of the Black Death. 0:04:24.880 --> 0:04:27.679 They were much more genetically diverse than the eleventh century. 0:04:28.040 --> 0:04:33.120 It represented what's called the population Bottlenecke. Million people died, 0:04:33.240 --> 0:04:35.560 about a third of the population of Europe, which is 0:04:35.640 --> 0:04:39.599 mind boggling. Yeah, it is all right, let's do it. Well. 0:04:39.640 --> 0:04:41.280 I was reading this one his story in his name 0:04:41.320 --> 0:04:43.280 is Skip Knox, and I don't know where he is now. 0:04:43.320 --> 0:04:46.080 But when he wrote that it was at the university, 0:04:46.120 --> 0:04:49.800 you know, Boise State, and he said, um abroncos he 0:04:49.839 --> 0:04:53.599 goes it's uh, it's worth saying this has never happened 0:04:53.600 --> 0:04:58.800 before or since death was an event like this where 0:04:58.960 --> 0:05:06.479 within about to three years million people died. That's never 0:05:06.560 --> 0:05:10.560 happened before. I mean, no war can account for that. Yeah, 0:05:10.600 --> 0:05:13.400 no other pandemic. Yeah, it's this. This was it. This 0:05:13.440 --> 0:05:15.480 was as bad as it gets, and it was bad 0:05:15.600 --> 0:05:17.400 so big that it was bad. And it was bad 0:05:17.480 --> 0:05:20.640 not just because of the ultimate devastation, but it was 0:05:20.720 --> 0:05:24.000 bad because of how gnarly the Black Death is. Yeah, 0:05:24.040 --> 0:05:26.560 why don't you wanted to talk about some symptoms? All right? 0:05:27.120 --> 0:05:29.159 If you had the Black Death, this is what you 0:05:29.160 --> 0:05:31.640 had to look forward to. First of all, you had 0:05:31.720 --> 0:05:35.320 no idea what was happening to you. Neither did your doctor, 0:05:35.760 --> 0:05:39.200 neither did your local cardinal or bishop. And you know, 0:05:39.320 --> 0:05:41.479 they didn't know a lot back then, but they had 0:05:41.520 --> 0:05:43.720 their like cock eye theories. At least they didn't even 0:05:43.760 --> 0:05:46.400 have cock eye theories on this. They had a cock 0:05:46.440 --> 0:05:49.039 eyed theory that everybody went along with. They developed something. 0:05:49.279 --> 0:05:51.039 But initially they're like, I don't know what this is. 0:05:51.520 --> 0:05:56.640 But you have these big tumor lumps, you got them 0:05:56.680 --> 0:05:59.760 on your body, you got black spots. Well to tell 0:05:59.800 --> 0:06:02.200 them about the tumors somewhere small, but they could get 0:06:02.200 --> 0:06:04.520 pretty big. Yeah, some as big as an apple, And 0:06:04.720 --> 0:06:06.720 they said in the article here that if you had 0:06:06.720 --> 0:06:09.120 one on your neck, it could permanently, like cut your 0:06:09.120 --> 0:06:12.080 head to one side, permanently, meaning like the five days 0:06:12.120 --> 0:06:15.880 you had left. I know, I hope it's okay to 0:06:15.960 --> 0:06:20.720 laugh a little bit this now. And you surely know. Um, 0:06:20.800 --> 0:06:26.440 you had pus using out of sores, open sores. You 0:06:26.520 --> 0:06:30.159 had a nasty smell because you were rotting from the 0:06:30.200 --> 0:06:35.200 inside out. Your breath was awful, it was gruesome, purple splotches. 0:06:35.600 --> 0:06:38.320 God's tokens, right, Yeah, they call them God's tokens, because 0:06:38.440 --> 0:06:41.120 once you got these, that means God's going to take 0:06:41.160 --> 0:06:45.080 you off the earth pretty soon. That's God's token. Fevers 0:06:45.120 --> 0:06:48.920 that could fry your brain, send you into delirium, vomiting, 0:06:49.720 --> 0:06:54.880 coughing up blood, blood, and puss using. I've already said 0:06:55.000 --> 0:06:58.240 it's worth twice. So, um, those are some of the symptoms. 0:06:58.320 --> 0:07:01.240 And once you start having the simp ums, you are 0:07:01.520 --> 0:07:04.240 pretty much done for within a matter of days. Right. 0:07:04.279 --> 0:07:08.000 And so in our modern day it takes a little 0:07:08.040 --> 0:07:11.840 while to bury somebody, even with this machinery that we 0:07:11.960 --> 0:07:17.680 used to to dig modern graves. Um. But back then 0:07:17.760 --> 0:07:20.320 it took even longer to dig a grave to hold 0:07:20.320 --> 0:07:23.760 the service to bury somebody. And when people die within 0:07:23.880 --> 0:07:25.680 days and suddenly there was like a third of the 0:07:25.720 --> 0:07:29.680 population dying off. There was no time to bury anybody, 0:07:29.840 --> 0:07:33.800 no space even there's literally stacking up dogs eating corpses. 0:07:34.440 --> 0:07:40.600 It saysn't here children hungry babies beside their dead mothers. Yeah, 0:07:40.640 --> 0:07:46.320 Molly edmans. Really when I wrote this, man, um, Yes, 0:07:46.440 --> 0:07:48.280 but that's the truth. I mean, that was crazy. That 0:07:48.320 --> 0:07:50.640 was the raw truth. That was an ugly, ugly, ugly scene. 0:07:50.640 --> 0:07:52.880 And of course anyone who see Monty Python knows that 0:07:52.920 --> 0:07:56.120 there are people who operated carts that banged on land pots. 0:07:56.120 --> 0:08:17.880 Since I bring out your dead, why s k, Well, 0:08:17.920 --> 0:08:21.360 we'll get into the flinging. Of course is too well, 0:08:21.400 --> 0:08:23.480 let's get into the flinging, because that's kind of how 0:08:23.520 --> 0:08:25.680 it started. Um. And first I want to point out 0:08:26.080 --> 0:08:30.000 the Black Death, you know, gripped Europe. It did not 0:08:30.120 --> 0:08:34.920 only impact Europe. It's so funny, it's so eurocentric the 0:08:34.960 --> 0:08:37.720 way we approached the Black Death. It started in the 0:08:37.760 --> 0:08:42.199 Gobi Desert sometime in the late thirteen twenties in China. 0:08:42.800 --> 0:08:46.120 China lost thirty five million people in the fourteenth century 0:08:46.320 --> 0:08:50.120 from the Black Death. No one ever mentioned. They always 0:08:50.120 --> 0:08:52.400 hear about the Europe the Black Death in Europe, so 0:08:52.520 --> 0:08:56.040 it was localized, and it was actually in in Asia 0:08:56.080 --> 0:09:00.240 and Central Asia um for a decade or two um. 0:09:00.280 --> 0:09:03.840 But they blame it pretty squarely on the Genoese for 0:09:03.960 --> 0:09:07.320 bringing it to Europe, right, yes, how did the Genoese 0:09:07.400 --> 0:09:10.720 get it? Well? In thirty seven in Kafa, which is 0:09:10.760 --> 0:09:14.240 modern day Ukraine, it was a Genoese trading post. They 0:09:14.240 --> 0:09:18.120 were attacked by the Tartar army. Uh, Tartars start to 0:09:18.160 --> 0:09:21.440 die off by the plague, and the Genoese are like, sweet, 0:09:22.000 --> 0:09:25.920 God is punishing our enemies and they're dying, Let's have 0:09:25.920 --> 0:09:29.200 a big party and celebrate. And then the Tartars are like, well, 0:09:29.240 --> 0:09:31.480 we're gonna start flinging our dead corpses over the wall 0:09:31.520 --> 0:09:33.839 at you because the smell is so awful. You will 0:09:33.920 --> 0:09:37.440 die from the smell. There. It was a stupid idea, 0:09:37.559 --> 0:09:39.720 but stupid idea but at work because they actually what 0:09:39.800 --> 0:09:42.439 they were doing. What they were doing was germ warfare, 0:09:43.559 --> 0:09:46.000 very early germ warfare. Right. They had it wrong though 0:09:46.040 --> 0:09:49.000 they thought it was a smell. Actually it was this pestilence. 0:09:49.760 --> 0:09:52.400 And so the Genoese, you know, said oh, we need 0:09:52.440 --> 0:09:53.800 to get rid of these nasty bodies, but it was 0:09:53.840 --> 0:09:57.120 too late. They were infected. By that point. The Genoese 0:09:57.200 --> 0:10:01.240 fled to Sicily and then from there it took two 0:10:01.320 --> 0:10:05.160 pass one. Uh where was the first one? The well? 0:10:05.200 --> 0:10:09.080 The first one went up through um Austria and Germany, 0:10:09.280 --> 0:10:12.200 and then the second path went through um Italy to 0:10:12.280 --> 0:10:15.720 France to the UK. Yes, at a speed which doesn't 0:10:15.760 --> 0:10:18.080 sound fast, but it really is. If you're talking about 0:10:18.360 --> 0:10:20.720 black death, about two and a half miles a day. 0:10:20.800 --> 0:10:24.040 And not only is it fast, like even by today's standards, 0:10:24.080 --> 0:10:26.960 this is before This is when people were riding horses 0:10:27.000 --> 0:10:31.320 and carts and the two real it's lightning fastest toll. 0:10:31.400 --> 0:10:33.800 It trained fast for that time. Yeah, yeah, Why is 0:10:33.800 --> 0:10:35.880 it called the black death? Actually? Do you know this? 0:10:36.280 --> 0:10:40.000 I do, so there's a there's a mistranslation. At some point, 0:10:41.000 --> 0:10:44.280 well back in the day, people called that the big 0:10:44.320 --> 0:10:48.480 death or the great mortality, the big death, that's bad. 0:10:48.600 --> 0:10:50.400 That's what they called it as it as it was happening, 0:10:50.520 --> 0:10:53.000 right and then um later on it came to be 0:10:53.120 --> 0:10:57.600 known as the um ultra morse, which is Latin for 0:10:58.280 --> 0:11:03.400 terrible death or black death. At some point in time, 0:11:03.440 --> 0:11:07.160 somebody decided that they liked the Black Death better. Uh. 0:11:07.160 --> 0:11:10.160 In sometime in the eighteenth century when they were using 0:11:10.160 --> 0:11:15.040 it to differentiate the um plague of London in sixteen 0:11:15.120 --> 0:11:19.880 sixty five, but they mistranslated. It wasn't originally called the 0:11:19.880 --> 0:11:23.720 Black Death or the um Terrible Death. It was called 0:11:23.720 --> 0:11:26.040 the Big Death. And then it just kind of went 0:11:26.080 --> 0:11:30.360 from there all right. Well, at the time, King Philip 0:11:30.440 --> 0:11:34.200 the sixth of France turned it over to the Paris 0:11:34.200 --> 0:11:37.280 College of Physicians, who were they were like the Mayo 0:11:37.360 --> 0:11:40.160 Clinic of the time, and they said, here, we need 0:11:40.200 --> 0:11:42.920 to figure out what this is. What is it? Smartest 0:11:42.960 --> 0:11:45.280 doctors in the world, and they says, we know, we 0:11:45.360 --> 0:11:47.960 figured it out. It's all here on the report. This 0:11:48.040 --> 0:11:50.760 is uh. This happened when Saturn and Jupiter and Mars 0:11:51.600 --> 0:11:55.280 lined up in Aquarius, and Jupiter's roll wet and hot 0:11:55.320 --> 0:11:57.680 and it soaked up the evil vapors from the earth 0:11:57.720 --> 0:12:00.840 and Mars is dry, so it exploded those purse and 0:12:01.040 --> 0:12:04.160 now it is a fog of death. And they very 0:12:04.160 --> 0:12:07.400 smugly pinpointed the time that it happened, one pm on 0:12:07.520 --> 0:12:13.320 March and they just shook their heads like but they 0:12:13.320 --> 0:12:15.920 did say it was a fog of death. My guess 0:12:15.960 --> 0:12:18.800 is that it was probably pretty foggy for some reason, 0:12:18.880 --> 0:12:21.760 some weather system happened, or they were onto something like 0:12:21.880 --> 0:12:27.240 it was being transmitted through the air somehow, which you know, 0:12:27.360 --> 0:12:29.280 they might have been actually onto something there with an 0:12:29.280 --> 0:12:34.440 airborne pathogen possibly, but instead they went with the fog 0:12:34.480 --> 0:12:37.160 of death from the planet's aligning. And another term for 0:12:37.160 --> 0:12:39.559 a fog of death is a miasthma. It's a corrupted 0:12:39.600 --> 0:12:46.520 bit of air. And this is what Europe went with, right, Yeah, like, okay, well, 0:12:46.559 --> 0:12:48.719 these are the smartest guys as far as medicine goes. 0:12:48.800 --> 0:12:53.600 They have the longest crow'sbeak masks of anybody, um, and 0:12:53.760 --> 0:12:55.760 we're gonna go with this fog of death thing, So 0:12:55.800 --> 0:12:58.280 how do we combat it? And what they figured out was, well, 0:12:58.400 --> 0:13:01.720 since you're breathing this fall, you gotta keep the fog 0:13:01.760 --> 0:13:03.840 at bay, and one good way to do that is 0:13:03.880 --> 0:13:08.960 to fight fog with fire smoke. So there were fires everywhere. Yeah, 0:13:09.000 --> 0:13:12.640 they were recommended to burn um aromatic woods, so people 0:13:12.640 --> 0:13:16.000 would and people even carry this stuff around rosemary, amber 0:13:16.040 --> 0:13:19.240 and musk. The Pope even stood between two fires when 0:13:19.240 --> 0:13:25.000 he addressed people. Yeah, they kept him burning on street corners. Um. 0:13:25.080 --> 0:13:28.400 And then there were the fact that it was coming 0:13:28.440 --> 0:13:30.880 from the south and it was a fog of death. 0:13:31.720 --> 0:13:36.040 They started putting glass in their southern windows so that 0:13:36.080 --> 0:13:38.320 the southern wing couldn't penetrate it. See that kind of 0:13:38.360 --> 0:13:41.360 smart there it is. They weren't all hokey. Now, some 0:13:41.520 --> 0:13:44.040 that seemed kind of smart. What didn't seem very smart 0:13:44.320 --> 0:13:51.360 was don't bathe don't have physical intimacy, although it's a 0:13:51.360 --> 0:13:54.120 good way to spread disease, so maybe they're onto something there. Um, 0:13:54.240 --> 0:13:57.960 don't sleep during the daytime. They had nothing to do 0:13:58.040 --> 0:14:00.840 with spreading it. They're like, just don't be lazy, avoid 0:14:00.920 --> 0:14:03.760 sad thoughts about disease. It's something to that if you 0:14:03.880 --> 0:14:06.600 believe in the mind, uh, if you believe in positive 0:14:06.640 --> 0:14:10.640 psychology exactly. So some of the little hokey there was 0:14:10.640 --> 0:14:12.920 a little substance to a bit of it. Um. I 0:14:12.960 --> 0:14:17.800 have a little cocktail tidbit for you, though, so awesome. 0:14:17.800 --> 0:14:20.320 I don't know. The word quarantine actually comes from the 0:14:20.360 --> 0:14:24.680 Black Death in Venice, Italy. They were pretty smart and 0:14:24.680 --> 0:14:26.480 they said, you know what, we should start isolating some 0:14:26.520 --> 0:14:28.480 of these ships of people that are coming in, not 0:14:28.600 --> 0:14:30.520 let them come on land until we know that no 0:14:30.520 --> 0:14:32.880 one on board is is sick. So let's do this 0:14:32.920 --> 0:14:34.720 for like thirty days. And then they went, now that's 0:14:34.720 --> 0:14:36.840 not long enough. It's just do it for forty days. 0:14:37.000 --> 0:14:44.680 Forty days or quawan quaranti giane quarantine. That's where the 0:14:44.680 --> 0:14:47.680 word came from. Well it's not as much of a 0:14:47.720 --> 0:14:51.200 stretch of somebody besides, Chuck is pronouncing it. But yes, 0:14:51.280 --> 0:14:53.600 that is where quarantine. You look at it, it looks 0:14:53.640 --> 0:14:56.560 like the word quarantine. Yeah, so that's pretty smart too. 0:14:56.640 --> 0:14:59.720 There are some smart people. Still, six of the population 0:14:59.760 --> 0:15:03.960 of this died within I think eighteen months. Yeah, so 0:15:04.000 --> 0:15:09.400 the quarantine, while practical and useful, you know, didn't protect everybody. Yeah, 0:15:09.440 --> 0:15:11.680 and you know, we don't know what the doctors were 0:15:11.720 --> 0:15:14.480 doing that much because all we have here is just 0:15:14.960 --> 0:15:18.400 recorded documents of what was going on. Well there there 0:15:18.440 --> 0:15:22.760 there wasn't even documentation. It was popular writers, church writers. 0:15:22.960 --> 0:15:24.840 It wasn't like science journals. I mean, not a lot 0:15:24.880 --> 0:15:27.240 of people knew how to read and write during this time. 0:15:27.280 --> 0:15:29.960 And the ones who did normally were affiliated with the church, 0:15:30.000 --> 0:15:32.480 so they would have had a very religious view of 0:15:32.520 --> 0:15:36.440 what was going on. Right, Um, they're probably blood letting there. Yeah, 0:15:36.560 --> 0:15:39.400 the like the physicians that were working the crow's mass 0:15:39.400 --> 0:15:44.200 guys um were uh blood letting. They were um opening 0:15:44.240 --> 0:15:47.920 up these bu bos, which is it's almost like a 0:15:47.960 --> 0:15:53.840 textual representation of a pussy boo. They would open these 0:15:53.880 --> 0:15:57.320 and drain them because that made sense to get rid 0:15:57.360 --> 0:16:01.000 of whatever is in there, I guess, very small. Yeah, Um, 0:16:01.040 --> 0:16:06.160 we still do that today, Poppins. It's yeah every Tuesday. Uh. 0:16:06.880 --> 0:16:09.000 Religion comes into play pretty heavily there because a lot 0:16:09.000 --> 0:16:11.680 of people said, you know, let's let's turn to God 0:16:11.960 --> 0:16:14.920 and pray for help. Well, a lot of people thought 0:16:14.920 --> 0:16:17.760 that this was punishment from God. Oh yeah, the flagellents, 0:16:18.200 --> 0:16:20.560 so only he could do anything about it or she 0:16:20.760 --> 0:16:24.840 depending in New York and um, so yes, the flagellents, 0:16:24.920 --> 0:16:27.600 chuck take it with the fligillents of Germany. Yeah, the 0:16:27.640 --> 0:16:32.000 brotherhood of the flood Flagellents had our vigilance. Flagelence had 0:16:32.000 --> 0:16:36.280 already been around, not flagilens though, no very big difference. Uh, 0:16:36.320 --> 0:16:38.440 they're already around. But they rose up, like you said, 0:16:38.480 --> 0:16:41.640 in Germany in the in the mid thirteen forties, and 0:16:41.720 --> 0:16:43.640 they thought it was punishment from God. And they thought, 0:16:43.680 --> 0:16:45.360 you know what, we're gonna do something about it. So 0:16:45.400 --> 0:16:47.400 you've heard of self flagellation, that's where it comes from. 0:16:47.480 --> 0:16:51.600 They would walk barefoot across Europe whipping themselves with their 0:16:51.680 --> 0:16:56.520 little whatever cat of nine tails. Uh scourges, scourges like 0:16:57.000 --> 0:16:59.160 what have you that had like sharp kind of barbed 0:16:59.640 --> 0:17:03.920 and uh. It didn't work though, and a lot of 0:17:03.920 --> 0:17:06.800 people turned against God because of that. They also killed 0:17:06.800 --> 0:17:11.320 a lot of Jews. The flagellents did a flagelence. Yeah, 0:17:13.440 --> 0:17:16.480 they killed Jews. They would kill clergy that opposed them, 0:17:16.480 --> 0:17:19.760 except for the Pope. And the Pope was like, you're 0:17:19.840 --> 0:17:22.840 officially denounced, and I think thirteen forty nine and that 0:17:22.920 --> 0:17:25.920 was it for the flagelence, although they popped up again 0:17:26.040 --> 0:17:30.800 in later um plugues and pestilences, but they stopped for 0:17:30.880 --> 0:17:35.000 the black death like immediately when they denounced them. Well, 0:17:35.000 --> 0:17:37.760 they killed Jews because there was a pretty bad rumor 0:17:37.800 --> 0:17:40.480 going around that the Jews had, uh, we're poisoning the 0:17:40.480 --> 0:17:43.800 water supply. And because at the time Christians and Jews 0:17:43.800 --> 0:17:48.040 lived separately, largely, a lot of Jewish Jewish communities were 0:17:48.040 --> 0:17:51.639 effectively quarantined so they didn't get hit as hard. So 0:17:51.680 --> 0:17:54.760 all of a sudden, Jews are I don't know prosperings 0:17:54.760 --> 0:17:58.200 the right word, but they're not dying like the Christians are. 0:17:58.280 --> 0:18:01.760 So so the Christians started burns. He started burning them alive. 0:18:01.800 --> 0:18:08.000 Apparently in Strasbourg, the Germany was more Jews died in 0:18:08.040 --> 0:18:11.280 Germany than anywhere else. Um at the hands of Christians 0:18:11.320 --> 0:18:15.399 who were upset about the plague um and in Strasburg 0:18:15.680 --> 0:18:20.880 in uh, let's see um, I think thirty eight on 0:18:20.880 --> 0:18:23.879 one day, two d Jews were burned alive at the stake, 0:18:24.840 --> 0:18:27.560 just that one city, on that one day. And apparently 0:18:27.720 --> 0:18:30.199 entire communities used to be walled up and set on 0:18:30.240 --> 0:18:33.240 fire with everybody, or Jews would convert to Christianity on 0:18:33.240 --> 0:18:35.919 the spot, or they would set their own houses on fire, 0:18:36.640 --> 0:18:39.640 which is kind of sensible, like, oh, look, my house 0:18:39.680 --> 0:18:42.040 is already on fire. Better, I should probably take off, 0:18:42.760 --> 0:18:45.760 keep on walking, see you guys later. Well, a lot 0:18:45.800 --> 0:18:48.240 of Jews fled to the countryside, didn't they too, because 0:18:48.240 --> 0:18:50.399 they were able to Yeah, good for them, is what 0:18:50.440 --> 0:18:51.880 I said. Well, I don't think it was just Jews. 0:18:51.880 --> 0:18:54.600 I think anybody who had the means of going to 0:18:54.640 --> 0:18:57.520 the countryside, which is crazy because I mean, like going 0:18:57.560 --> 0:18:59.879 to the countryside means like stepping out your back to 0:19:00.000 --> 0:19:03.160 where I thought in like the fourteenth century. Yeah, but 0:19:03.240 --> 0:19:06.439 apparently there were still the wealthy went out to the 0:19:06.440 --> 0:19:09.400 country once in a while and they would Yeah that's 0:19:09.480 --> 0:19:30.480 why SKO. So it was needless to say it was 0:19:30.520 --> 0:19:34.640 a really rough few years for europe um and by 0:19:35.160 --> 0:19:40.679 thirteen fifty two it was largely gone. Yeah, it just 0:19:40.800 --> 0:19:43.479 took off. But what I mean there was It's not 0:19:43.560 --> 0:19:46.600 like all right, black desk on, everything's cool now. They 0:19:46.600 --> 0:19:52.520 were like huge, huge effects. Apparently the um self flagellation worked, right, Yeah, 0:19:53.160 --> 0:19:55.040 sure that's what it was. Well, yeah, you have to 0:19:55.080 --> 0:19:58.760 imagine if a third right, so that means that between you, 0:19:58.840 --> 0:20:02.080 me and Jerry, one of us dies, but it clearly 0:20:02.080 --> 0:20:08.000 be me. It's not necessarily true. I'd set myself on fire. Um, okay, 0:20:08.040 --> 0:20:12.800 so then two of us would have died, right, Um, 0:20:13.200 --> 0:20:16.880 I mean a third a third of of this this 0:20:17.240 --> 0:20:22.280 population within like seriously, like two years, is just gone. 0:20:22.880 --> 0:20:26.560 People are um being eaten by dogs or corpses are 0:20:26.560 --> 0:20:29.399 being eaten by dogs in the streets. Families are just 0:20:29.480 --> 0:20:33.160 completely abandoning one another once they get sick. The whole 0:20:33.480 --> 0:20:37.120 um social psyche, the collective psyche of Europe just kind 0:20:37.119 --> 0:20:39.360 of crumble a little bit. It took a pretty big ding, 0:20:39.880 --> 0:20:42.320 and one of the places it took that ding was 0:20:42.320 --> 0:20:45.879 in religion. A lot of heretical society sprung up because 0:20:45.960 --> 0:20:49.720 it was like, either this was your work, God, or 0:20:49.840 --> 0:20:53.080 you didn't do anything to help us, so we're not 0:20:53.160 --> 0:20:55.520 coming to church anymore. Well yeah, Instead of being like 0:20:55.560 --> 0:20:59.399 really thankful that they survived, people uh partied like it 0:20:59.440 --> 0:21:02.960 was nineteen nine, basically big time crazy parties. Yeah, a 0:21:03.000 --> 0:21:09.280 lot of debauchery, lots of debauchery. Um uh. There was 0:21:09.320 --> 0:21:12.479 an economic impact to a huge one. Well yeah, if 0:21:12.520 --> 0:21:15.160 half your sorry, if a third of the workforce is gone, 0:21:16.640 --> 0:21:19.719 you've got no one working, So labor is gonna skyrocket. 0:21:19.960 --> 0:21:22.080 The price of labor is the price of labor is 0:21:22.640 --> 0:21:26.840 cost of goods food, you know, the little silver lining. 0:21:26.840 --> 0:21:29.760 Their food was in supply because there weren't as many 0:21:29.800 --> 0:21:34.400 people to eat it, exactly. Sadly. The other cool thing though, 0:21:34.440 --> 0:21:38.440 is it's potentially we saw the birth of modern science 0:21:38.480 --> 0:21:41.520 and medicine because of the Black Death. Because the leaders 0:21:42.320 --> 0:21:45.800 we're like, you know, this whole planet's aligning thing was 0:21:45.840 --> 0:21:48.040 pretty stupid now that we look back at it, so 0:21:48.440 --> 0:21:51.520 why don't we found some schools and do some real 0:21:51.760 --> 0:21:54.840 research based on physical science and give that a whirl. 0:21:56.040 --> 0:21:58.240 And then it started it it worked, which is some 0:21:58.680 --> 0:22:01.280 kind of ironic as well, because is the population was 0:22:01.320 --> 0:22:04.280 so decimated that it even after they had this idea, 0:22:04.320 --> 0:22:06.920 they had to wait a little while to reopen schools 0:22:06.960 --> 0:22:11.720 because they couldn't staff them. Oh yeah, um. And also, Chuck, 0:22:11.800 --> 0:22:14.760 there were there was an almost complete loss of any 0:22:14.800 --> 0:22:19.280 illusions about death and whether or not it's coming for you. Um. 0:22:19.320 --> 0:22:23.600 There's a whole allegory and art that um that sprang 0:22:23.640 --> 0:22:26.320 up at the time called Dance macab which was the 0:22:26.440 --> 0:22:29.640 dance of Death, which is basically like you know, showing 0:22:30.000 --> 0:22:34.360 living people and skeletons, you know, working side by side 0:22:34.560 --> 0:22:38.119 or um, hanging out or partying together or whatever. And 0:22:38.200 --> 0:22:40.040 the point of that is that you know, death can 0:22:40.080 --> 0:22:42.800 come at any time and it's coming for everybody. So 0:22:43.080 --> 0:22:45.080 art and poetry and things like that just took a 0:22:45.119 --> 0:22:48.080 real downer turn there for a while because that was 0:22:48.160 --> 0:22:51.200 clearly what everyone was thinking about at the time. That's right, Chuck, 0:22:52.480 --> 0:22:54.520 Uh what caused it? See, this is where I get 0:22:54.520 --> 0:22:58.800 a little, um a little confused, because there's conflicting information 0:22:58.840 --> 0:23:01.040 even to this day. Well, it's um one of the 0:23:01.080 --> 0:23:03.680 things where we thought we figured it out. But uh, 0:23:04.320 --> 0:23:09.439 modern techniques and modern investigation have kind of led us 0:23:09.480 --> 0:23:12.320 to think, as you like that, I have have led 0:23:12.400 --> 0:23:16.440 us to think that maybe that first idea hasn't wasn't right. Yeah, 0:23:16.480 --> 0:23:19.800 the first idea came out of the third pandemic, which 0:23:20.200 --> 0:23:24.800 was in eight in Hong Kong and India. Right um. 0:23:24.840 --> 0:23:33.680 And two bacteriologists, Alexander Yerson and uh Shibasaburo Kitasato, thanks um. 0:23:33.880 --> 0:23:38.679 They worked independently and isolated the cause of that third pandemic, 0:23:38.800 --> 0:23:41.920 and it is what we know today as bubonic plague. 0:23:42.200 --> 0:23:46.480 It's a bacterium called your Cina pestis um, named after 0:23:46.760 --> 0:23:51.520 Alexander Jerson, right um, and it lives in the four 0:23:51.560 --> 0:23:56.120 gut of fleas, rodent fleas that feast on rats. Yeah, 0:23:56.119 --> 0:24:00.280 this was interesting, I thought, because the fleat bites the 0:24:00.320 --> 0:24:04.400 regular fleet um bites rat and drinks blood. And it's like, 0:24:04.440 --> 0:24:09.959 oh man, that was fantastic. Uh. If you're infected with 0:24:10.040 --> 0:24:13.200 the your sena, you're sending a pestis in your flee 0:24:13.960 --> 0:24:16.639