![]() ![]() Some historians estimate the disease led to even higher death tolls-up to 200 million.Īs for how to stop the disease, people still had no scientific understanding of contagion, says Mockaitis, but they knew that it had something to do with proximity. The Black Death, which hit Europe in 1347, claimed an astonishing 25 million lives in just four years. The plague never really went away, and when it returned 800 years later, it killed with reckless abandon. The people of Tournai bury victims of the Black Death circa 1353. “As to how the plague ended, the best guess is that the majority of people in a pandemic somehow survive, and those who survive have immunity.” 2. “People had no real understanding of how to fight it other than trying to avoid sick people,” says Thomas Mockaitis, a history professor at DePaul University. The plague decimated Constantinople and spread like wildfire across Europe, Asia, North Africa and Arabia killing an estimated 30 to 50 million people, perhaps half of the world’s population. It was carried over the Mediterranean Sea from Egypt, where plague-ridden fleas hitched a ride on black rats that snacked on grain. The Plague of Justinian arrived in Constantinople, the capital of the Byzantine Empire, in 541 CE. Three of the deadliest pandemics in recorded history were caused by a single bacterium, Yersinia pestis, a fatal infection otherwise known as the plague. Here it's seen under optical microscopy X 1000. Yersinia pestis, formerly pasteurella pestis, was the bacteria responsible for the plague.
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