Beginning in the early 1330s, a fatal outbreak of the Bubonic Plague began spreading
throughout China. With the effect on mainly rodents, fleas are carriers and transporters that
have infected humans. Unfortunately, once humans are infected, the plague is highly
contagious and is spread extremely rapidly. Extremely painful lymph gland swelling,
called buboes, is how the disease gets its name. Along with the swelling, other symptoms
beginning to show up are fever, chills, general ill feeling, seizures, muscle pains and
headaches. The swelling of the lymph glands would begin to fill with puss and eventually
turn black.
With China being one of the busiest of the world’s trading ports; it was only a matter of
time before the plague was to spread to Europe and Western Asia. October, 1347, the
return of several Italian merchant ships from the Black Sea, a major link in trade with
China, had brought back more than just traded goods. In Sicily, countless numbered of
infected people on board were already on deaths row due to the plague. Within days, the
cities and surrounding countryside had become infectious. With terrible speed, the bubonic
plague had spread as far north as England, by that next August. “The Black Death was
terrifyingly, indiscriminately contagious: “the mere touching of the clothes,” wrote
Boccaccio, “appeared to itself to communicate the malady to the toucher.” The disease was
also terrifyingly efficient. People who were perfectly healthy when they went to bed at
night could be dead by morning (Black Death).”
“In winter the disease seemed to disappear, but only because fleas–which were now
