Name: Quiñones, Mary Angela Felicia T.

Submission Date: November 11, 2022

Section: CPE 1 Professor: Dr. Andy G. Gutierrez, Ph.D.

Activity 1

The Plague of our Time

The Bubonic Plague, which originated in China, is a highly infectious disease spread by
fleas that fleaed through their bites and introduce the bacterium Yersinia pestis, which brought
about the deaths of millions of people of all ages in Europe and Asia during the Middle Ages. It
became the earliest pandemic to be recorded and was known as the ―Black Death‖ after the first
wave in Europe from 1347 to 1351, wiping out at least two-thirds of its population.

The outbreaks of other diseases like smallpox and leprosy can attribute to the plague at
the time. But the patterns of symptoms described were mostly consistent with one illness, and
the collective experience was of that disease. Common symptoms were the appearance of
painful bubos⁠ —hence the name, bubonic plague⁠ —in the groin, neck, and armpits, which
later secreted pus and blood, followed by acute fever and vomiting blood. Victims usually die
between two and seven days after being infected. The death rate was 60–90 percent.
The Italian authorities instituted some of the first official public health measures to control the
plague. These include medical inspections, isolation of people who were sick in plague
hospitals, restriction of ships to port, and controlling the movement of people and goods
(Science Museum, 2019), even used today.

The second wave in the 1500s was because of the emergence of a new virulent strain
of the disease, which hit France particularly, killing two and a half million people between 1600
and 1670. It also struck Italy, Holland, England, and France in 1720 and Russia in the 1770s.
The last major outbreak in London was just before the ―Great Fire of London. The Outbreaks in
Western Europe declined from the mid-1600s, but the reason is still unclear.

The last wave began in Southern China in 1865 and then spread to Hong Kong and
India, where at least twelve million people died. At the end of the 1800s, medical researchers
observed and investigated the disease in detail for the first time. A French-Swiss bacteriologist
Alexandre Yersin isolated the bacterium that caused the disease in 1897 and named it after
him. A year later, in 1898, Paul Louis Somond established the mechanism for transmission of
the bacteria via fleas, which transferred bacteria from infected hosts to the non-infected through
their bites. The black rats are also known as house rats or ship rats. (Britannica, 2022)
transported the fleas globally over land and on ships.
Name: Quiñones, Mary Angela Felicia T. Submission Date: November 11, 2022
Section: CPE 1 Professor: Dr. Andy G. Gutierrez, Ph.D.

The consequences of this pandemic were many. A cessation of wars and a sudden
slump in trade immediately followed but were only of short duration. Nevertheless, the drastic
reduction of cultivated land was a significant and enduring consequence due to the deaths of so
many laborers. It manifested to be the ruin of many landowners (Daniel W. Gingerich, 2021).
The shortage of laborers compelled them to substitute wages or money rents in place of labor
services to keep their tenants. There was also a general wage rise for artisans and peasants
(Alfani, 2020). These changes brought a new fluidity to society.

Works Cited
Science Museum. (2019, April 25). Retrieved from https://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/objects-and-
stories/medicine/bubonic-plague-first-pandemic

Alfani, G. (2020, June 29). The economic consequences of plages: lessons for the age of Covid-19.
Retrieved from History & Policy: https://www.historyandpolicy.org/policy-papers/papers/the-
economic-consequences-of-plague-lessons-for-the-age-of-covid-
19#:~:text=In%20the%20aftermath%20of%20the,half%20of%20the%20seventeenth%20century
.

Britannica. (2022, October 18). Great Mortality. Retrieved from

https://www.britannica.com/event/Black-Death/Cause-and-outbreak

Daniel W. Gingerich, J. P. (2021, June 08). Pandemics and Political Development. Retrieved from
Cambridge Core: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/world-politics/article/pandemics-
and-political-development/EA9466FE5164149AD4350B7D38222A5C