[A Plague Doctor Who Brought Death]- Revision

He is wearing a long leather raincoat which covers his body entirely and a crow-like face mask that looks like a weapon at any moment and holding a stick that is long and very sharp. Who do you think the man wearing a strange cloth is? My answer is “who is one of  grim reapers”. Maybe your answer is similar as mine. However, he is a doctor against our expectation and his expectable nick name is a “break doctor”. The scary costume was the real doctor’s dress when they visited the patients who got the plague in Europe during the 14th century. How have the costume changed to a scary creature from a doctor's clothing?

          We cannot imagine the time when the Black Death swept through entire Europe. The estimated number of people who were killed from the disease was around one third of all people in Europe. This number shows that at least a person in a household died, and the plague was everybody’s problem. Even more surprising is the death rate of the plague. 99%? Unfortunately, it was 200%. How could it be over 100%? The reason is when a person got the plague, not only must the person die, but the person also infects someone new. I cannot imagine how horrible the situation was.

Then, what caused an abundant amount of death? According the recent article “Black Death SkeletonsGive up Secrets of Life and Death”, the cause of the diseased’ spread is not because of fleas from rats, but because of aerial infection. I think that the recent cause is more reasonable because if the disease had transmitted through fleas, there would have needed fleas as numberless as the sands. People who were living at that time thought about the reasons of the plague as follows. The thoughts were a quite sad and a bold idea.

1.             People got the plague after they watched the person who already got the plague.

2.             The source of infection was bad air.

3.             People got the plague because they drank water from a poisoned well.

Because of these thoughts, it should seem that the doctors dressed up like the picture. The doctor could protect himself by wearing the weird custom. The most interesting thing is for me the mask. At first, I thought why the doctors made the ugly mask like a raven. However, there was a wise idea of the doctors. The mask could prevent the doctor from bad smell. The doctors kept perfume or spice in beak of the mask. Even though the doctors did not know the reason of the Black Death, their costume should seem that they prevented them from the disease.

There was another reason that contributed the high death rate. It was nothing less than the method in treating the Black Death. As you can see the picture, the treatment at the time was to ‘bleed’ patients. The remedy was more of a hindrance than a help, so my people were dead. And then, the doctors started to be called as the doctors of bring the death. The reason why people consider the plague doctor as a ghost is probably base on this history.

A Haunted Island, Poveglia

The island, Poveglia, was put up for auction on condition that Italian government leases the island for 99 years. As you can see the map, the island is located on an excellent place where is between Venice and Lido in northern Italy, and it is picturesque surroundings. It looks like Sleeping Beauty’s castle.

             
            How much are you willing to pay for it if you have enough money? 500 billion dollars or more? You cannot control your shock if you know how much the island was auctioned off. It was awarded 513,000 euros(about 700,000 dollars) by Luigi Brugnaro, an Italian businessman. Could you believe it? Is it so cheap, isn’t it?

There are horror stories about the island. After you know the stories, you will nod your head why the bid is dirt cheap. When the Black Death had been a raging epidemic in the 14^th century, the Italian government isolated patients from Venice. The government sent them to the island because the Venice had a fetid smell of dead corpses. People made a big hole, dumped the bodies in the pit, and burnt them off. What was worse, some people who were showing symptoms were burnt with corpses. Of course, it couldn’t be helped because there was no alternative. However, whenever I am faced with remorseless events, people do anything no matter how it is cruel. More than 160 thousand people died in the island, and the island was covered with ashes of them. If people see ghosts in the island, it might be true.

Unfortunately, this is not the last. A person built a mental hospital in 1922. Strangely, patients began to die off without any special reason. Was it because of the curse of ghosts?  Maybe many people thought that way. One day, the director of the hospital committed suicide by drowning. After his death, people knew a startling discovery: he did medical experiments on patients, and the reason of the strange death of patients was his experiments. A new rumor began to circulate. The rumor was that the reason of his death was not a suicide, but it was because of ashes of infectious cases. The ashes strangled his neck, and he died. True or not, people started to leave the island. The island changed to haunted island?

Now what do you think about the winning price? Is it still cheap?

Soon you can visit the island because the successful bidder is changing the island from haunted island to a tourist spot. Do you want to visit the place?  I don’t.

The Positive Effects of the Black Death

Nothing is important than people’s lives. In that regard the Black Death that killed innumerable people was a calamity. However, there is no positive influence because of the Black Death? During this week, I collected research data about the positive impacts of the Black Death. After I read web pages, I found that the Black Death has been a blessing to the medieval people after the plague.

                 At first, the plague caused the collapse of a feudal society. The Middle age society was dependent on feudal system, so there was little movement among and between classes.  For nearly a thousand years, the feudal Europe was a class-ridden society which was dominated by feudal lords and Catholic churches. Furthermore, 90% of people was peasants, worked hard, and died young.  Population reduction caused the shortage of labor. The society based on a labor-intensive agriculture work was forced to be collapsed and the value of the labor increased significantly. Also, the severe shortage affected mechanization and the invention of printing by Gutenberg in 1445. Probably, if the Black Death had not happened, the feudal society have sustained for a long time. The development of Europe would be delayed.

Christ the Saviour in the Tree of Life                     Birth of Venus
            (The Middle Age)                                     ( Renaissance)

               Secondly, a wind of change was blowing through religion. The Middle age people were apt to entirely depend on religion. They clung to religion to cure the Black Death, but the Catholic churches were not totally in control of the disease. In addition, after people saw the death of priests, they started leaving the churches because they believed that the priests were representative of God, but the priests dead as same as normal people. The influence of religion on the society was played out and people started to have interested in human and nature. As a result, humanism began to germinate in people’s thought and this change led to Renaissance. 

                Of course, the development of society cannot be exchanged for the lives of people. However, it is an undeniable fact that the Black Death made positive changes of the medieval society. I think that most of historical events have two sides of the same coin. That can apply to individual, too. Sometimes, I only focused the bad events when something bad happened. There might have been better things because of a contretemps.  I trust that “Every cloud has a silver lining”.

Witch Hunt

Recently, I often hear the word, “witch hunt”, through a media. Especially, because of the development of the internet, a modern edition of witch-hunt frequently happens on the internet. We use the word, when we condemn a person by judging an incident with fragmentary evidence. Where does the phase witch-hunt come from? 

The witch hunt started in the 15^th century in earnest. Europeans at that time believed in devilish magic power. In the beginning, a spiritual court took complete charge of witchcraft trials and there was not a lot of the number of victims. However, witch hunt came to a climax from late in the 16^th century to 17^th century, after witchcraft trials was moved to a common court from a spiritual. The meaning of Witch hunt changed from hunting heretics to preserving a ruling class.

What caused the witch hunt to increase explosively? It was a chaotic age in the history of Europe: the Reformation, infectious diseases, unstable economy and droughts. The establishment of the society imputed the reason of troubles to magic of witch. This thought is well displayed in the book, Bull Summis Desiderantes, Dec. 5^th, 1484 by innocent VIII.

many persons of both sexes, heedless of their own salvation and forsaking the catholic faith, give themselves over to devils male and female, and by their incantations, charms, and conjurings, and by other abominable superstitions and sortileges, offences, crimes, and misdeeds, ruin and cause to perish the offspring of women, the foal of animals, the products of the earth, the grapes of vines, and the fruits of trees, as well as men and women, cattle and flocks and herds and animals of every kind, vineyards also and orchards, meadows, pastures, harvests, grains and other fruits of the earth; that they afflict and torture with dire pains and anguish, both internal and external, these men, women, cattle, flocks, herds, and animals, and hinder men from begetting and women from conceiving, and prevent all consummation of marriage; that, moreover, they deny with sacrilegious lips the faith they . received in holy baptism; and that, at the instigation of the enemy of mankind, they do not fear to commit and perpetrate many other abominable offences and crimes, at the risk of their own souls, to the insult of the divine majesty and to the pernicious example and scandal of multitudes.

Also, there is another reason. People who were killed because of a false accusation as the witch were forfeited all of their assets. Even the cost of torture and firewood for being burnt alive were up to them.

People started witch hunt to solve the situation. The main victims were widows who were poor and old, so most of the victims were women. Maybe the reason why we think that the witch is as a woman is because of this history.The witch hunt disappeared after World War I, after leaving a lot of the innocent victims.

We already know that the witch hunt has a negative connotation, and the history like the witch hunt never happens again. However, the things are happening now as a little different form.  People easily focus on more an accident than the authenticity of the accident.  When a person goes to the guillotine, people fiercely criticize the man with missing the important points. Particularly, people are apt to criticize easily other people on the internet, because anonymity is guaranteed. We remember that we would be a victim of witch hunt at some day. We should have an eye for an accident as a whole. Don’t be stupid by being not able to see the forest for the tree.

The Black Death(2010)

The Black Death(2010)

Director: Christopher Smith

Writer: Dario Poloni

"The fumes of the dead are in the air like poison. The plague, more cruel and more pitiless than war, descended upon us. A pestilence, that would leave half of our kingdom dead. Where did it come from? What carried its germ. The priests told us it was God's punishment. For what sin? What commandment must we break that could earn this? No, we knew the truth. This was not God's work, but devilry. Or witchcraft. But our task, to hunt down a demon, was God's cure."

     While searching on the internet about my topic, I found the movie, which is set in the 14^th century Europe, the Black Death had been a raging epidemic. I easily pulled into the movie because I read a lot of date about the Black Death.

I got a chance to experience how terrible it was: lots of bodies lie along the street, the mistaken notion of the causes of the disease and a witch hunter. It gave me several ideas.

     First, it is how the Black Death affected religion. Before the epidemic, people were so religious that they thought the plague was a punishment of God. People depended on religion to overcome the plague. Some devout people begged for mercy to god by flagellated themselves. However, priests could not find a solution, and they also died from the virus like common people who got the Black Death. How could they still rely on religion? People began to turn their back on God. It is no wonder that the people lost of esteem for the church.

    Procession of Flagellants - Francisco Goya                                 Black Death Movie(2010)                           Second is a witch hunt. In the movie, the emissary of the bishop went to a village where there the epidemic did not spread. They received an order to catch a necromancer since the bishop thought that the reason why the village people did not get the plague was because of the necromancer. Maybe, the leadership needed a scapegoat to maintain its social status. By a witch hunt, the leadership wanted to divert the attention of the people. Who was a victim? How many people died without trouble?I want to find more information about a witch hunt.

The Doctor of Death

Do you know who is he? Right!  He is a person who is dressing up a Halloween costume as a “Plague doctor”. Is a plague doctor a ghost or a monster?

However, the answer is “NO”. You can easily know who he is by checking the character’s name. You may have a prejudice after you see the picture because he is what you are expecting. I also thought he was a kind of a Grim Reaper when I saw the picture. The scary costume was the real doctor’s dress when they visited the patients who got the plague in Europe during the 14^th century. How have the costume changed to a scary creature from a doctor's clothing?

The Black Death was a deadly plague that swept through entire Europe. The death rate of the Black Death was 200%. How could it be over 100%? The reason is when a person got the plague, not only must the person die, but the person also infects someone new. I cannot imagine how horrible the situation was. Because of insufficient medical information, the doctors could not find a cure for the disease. It’s too obvious that the doctors did not know the cure, for they did not know what was causing. Back then, people thought about reasons of the plague as follows.

1. People got the plague after they watched the person who already got the plague.
2. The source of infection was bad air.
3. People got the plague because they drank water from a poisoned well.

Because of these thoughts, it should seem that the doctors dressed up like the picture. A long leather coat, a pair of leather glove, and a mask looked like a crow helped to minimize the risk of infection. The most interesting thing is for me the mask. At first, I thought why the doctors made the ugly mask like a raven. However, there was a wise idea of the doctors. The mask could prevent the doctor from bad smell. The doctors kept perfume or spice in beak of the mask. Even though the doctors did not know the reason of the Black Death, their costume should seem that they prevented them from the disease. The plague was caused by Yersinia pestis, a bacterial disease spread by fleas from rats.

The most serious problem was the method in treating the Black Death. As you can see the picture, the treatment at the time was to ‘bleed’ patients. The remedy was more of a hindrance than a help, so many people were dead. And then, the doctors started to be called as the doctors of bringing the death.

The reason why people consider the plague doctor as a ghost is probably base on this history.  

The epidemics of the century

Illustration of bubonic plague in the Bible (1411)

      What is a more horrible thing than a war? I think that it is an epidemic. After I read the article “London Skeletons Reveal Secrets of the Black Death” from The Washington Post, I became interested in an epidemic. I was surprise after knowing the fact that the obvious effect of the Black Death was the major decline in population, not a war. A few years ago, a virus affected and killed a few Korean people. At that time, I got scared even though only a few people were dead. Because of the Black Death killed over a third of the population of European people, I cannot imagine how serious the situation was back then.

     How many times have epidemics happened in the history of mankind? What kind of epidemic was there in human history? How did the epidemics change the human history?