Should I wear a mask or a beak?
Bubonic Plague = Black Plague = Black Death = The Plague (they all mean the same thing)
In the year 1346, a virus began to spread in China and the rest of inner-Asia. This plague is caused by the bacterium Yersinia pesti. If China was an isolated nation in its dynasty era the plague would just be confined to East Asia, however, Eurasia and North Africa’s economies were interconnected so the plague spread quickly.
In 1347, an Turkic army stationed at the Black Sea port of Kaffa/Feodosiya. The army as it was succumbing to the plague launched corpses infected with the Black Plague with catapults towards its enemies to take them down as well. From the port of Kaffa, the epidemic moved west towards Sicily in 1347 and to mainland Europe as well as north Africa in 1348. Central Europe got hit with the plague in 1349. The north of Ireland and Scotland became affected with the Black Plague in 1350.
There were many resurgences of the Black Plague in Europe throughout the rest of the 1300s and into the 1400s.
The effects of the Black Death varied from place to place as well. In some areas like Flanders and Milan there was minimal death and destruction. In other areas like Aragon and Tuscany, there was an extreme amount of death. Many royal figures also came down with the plague as well: King Edward III of England and Queen Elanor of Aragon both died from the Black Death.
There were many physical, social, and political consequences due to the Black Plague. These include deaths of royalty and many people obviously. The total death toll is estimated to be around 25 million. Due to the amount of death, the amount of land being cultivated slowed as farmers died in large amounts. There was also a shortage of workers throughout the world. There were many works of art depicting the suffering and death that occurred during the Plague. The religious consequence was that the Catholic Church lost tons of influence. People became disillusioned with religion due to the horrid situation. Jews were blamed for spreading the plague. Due to this widespread belief, instances of Anti-semitism rose greatly. Many Jewish communities were victims of mob violence that led to many deaths.
Today, there are few people that contract the virus every year. However, due to modern understandings of medicine it is easy to confine the patients and limit spreading. Just this year in 2025 a man in New Mexico contracted the Bubonic Plague.
The Black Plague is also the same sickness that has the scary but cool doctors with the beaks. The later wave of the illness in the 1700s saw the doctors wear masks that look like beaks. Inside the beaks would have a mix of 55 herbs called Theriac. The purpose of the herbs was that doctors thought that air hitting into the herbs would be filtered before the doctors encountered the plague patients’ noses and lungs. This was thought to protect the doctors.
What is important to note is that these masks were not worn in the first waves of the plague in the 1300s and 1400s but the waves that occurred centuries later in the 1700s. These two waves in the two century periods are the same sickness but they just occured at different times.
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