Black Death Essay Examples

75, 000, 000–200, 000, 000

1346 - 1353

Eurasia, North Africa

The Pestilence, the Great Mortality, the Plague

Black Death was a pandemic that ravaged Europe between 1347 and 1351, taking a proportionately greater toll of life than any other known epidemic or war up to that time.

Bubonic plague is a type of infection caused by the Yersinia pestis (Y. pestis) bacterium which is spread mostly by fleas on rodents and other animals. Humans who are bitten by the fleas then can come down with plague.

The plague that caused the Black Death originated in China in the early to mid-1300s and spread along trade routes westward to the Mediterranean and northern Africa. It reached southern England in 1348 and northern Britain and Scandinavia by 1350.