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The thing that jumped out at me from this reading was the reappearance of Ibn Battuta, who was mentioned at the beginning of last night's reading. I thought it was interesting how he went to all these cities with the plague (Cairo, Syria), but did not catch it himself. Did he keep himself separated from the sick or did he just get extremely lucky? Hmm...
The reading also described him as a "tireless traveler", which got me interested in looking up more about him.
I looked at the Wikipedia article about him, and found out that most of the records of his travels come from his own writings, and that he may have embellished some things, but people generally accept what his writings say as fact. It also says that there is a crater on the Moon named after him, as well as a shopping mall, which I thought was kind of funny. I bet he didn't think someone would name part of the Moon after him!
I also found this map of his travels (and Marco Polo's, for comparison). Considering he could really only travel by foot or horse/camelback, he covered an impressive amount of ground in his 60-something years.
I also found this painting of what he supposedly looked like.
Lastly, I looked up the crater on the Moon that's named after him, and found this photo
of it that shows what it looks like and where it is on the Moon.
I wanted to learn a little more about Ibn Battuta. He was known for his travailing and exploring. He traveled to the Islamic world and many other places beyond that. When he was 12 years old he went on a Hajj (pilgrimage to Mecca). He also went on a second hajj when he was older.
Wikipedia
When Ibn Battuta was returning to Damascus he found out his father had died. The black death had started and death would be a reoccurring theme. His mother also died too from the plague.
I also found this map that shows the spread of the black death in Asia during the 14th century. This map shows the dates of breakout of the plague, where the plague mostly was and how it spread.
I find it very interesting that over time dieses change, so did the " black death" ever evolve into another type of dieses? I also don’t understand how the plaque went away so suddenly, how did it end up not affecting as many people? Was there a point where those who didn’t already have the plague develop a immunity to the dieses? I still would like to know more about the treatments that were used for treating the black plague. But while researching this idea, I found that the human plague still kills about 15 people a year in the united states which are normally in rural areas. I also found that there is a strain of the black plaque that is in Africa, that is killing many villages. The article talks about how the plague normally happens during the rain seasons, so scientists believe that insects are still caring the plague.
Is there someone with the plague today?
I did some research and found out that there are around 10-20 cases of the black death (bubonic plague) in the US every year. However, with our better sewage systems and better technology the plague is kept in check. Every time that someone catches the plague where they got it from gets traced and the rats in that area are killed. Also according to USA today last year there were many squirrels in Denver that were dying supposedly of the black death.
Black Death Squirrels
It said that there were many different plagues that came with the black death. Did all of these travel with the rats and lice?
How did the fleas contract the disease? How do we know so much about the plague, if so many people died. How can we have such specific symptoms if we don't even know how many people died? It said the rats were carriers, were there any people carriers as well?
I found a site that says that two people in 2002 were diagnosed with the disease
i found on wikipedia wikipedia that the total amount of people that the black death killed was anywhere between 350 million and 450 million. i also found an interactive here
that shows the spread of the plague through 1347-1350.
I found it weird that the Jews were persecuted because of the plague. They were persecuted in England, thrown out of France, and killed throughout Germany..
Although the Christians and Muslims did not like each other, do you think that they came together to try and find different cures for the plague?
There was a lot of talk about medicine, and one of the ways that they helped prevent the disease was snake venom/flesh?
What happened to the peasants/women who owned land after the plague?
The reading was talking about treatments of the Black death. So i looked up that alitle but i found a more interesting topic which is what the Doctor's wore. They would wear a widely brimmed black hat which would tell the people that they are doctor's and possible protect from infection. A long over coat would be worn to cover as much skin as possible to prevent the doctor from getting the black death. They would also wear leather pants kind of like waders. To protect them from breathing in the black death they wore a bird shaped mask and the beak of the bird would be filled with good smelling herbs and spices. They would also have a cane to direct people and possibly examine them.
I was wondering if any of the treatments made the victims life any better.
The reading mentioned a lot of numbers regarding who died and said that historians disagree about how many people were actually killed by the plague, so I decided to look that up from a few different sources...
Wikipedia says that the Black Plague killed an estimated 75-200 million people, and also listed it as the deadliest pandemic in history.
A Useless Information website states that the Black Plague killed 137 million people (a pretty specific number). Another interested fact from that page is that supposedly, 2 million people were killed per year (at the worst).
One last Black Plague website states the number 200 million again, so I'm thinking it might be closer to that, although I'm not sure how reliable that website is.
I'd like to find out a little bit more about death tolls of certain places, too, like different countries and kingdoms.
I thought that it was good that before the actual reading about the plague started the book explained why it is hard to give the symptoms, causes, and affects of diseases from so long ago. It kind of reminded me of a disclaimer of some sort. The way it described the plague was rather interesting in itself, one i found rather interesting was when they described the plague as a cocktail of diseases. which lead to my first question:
- The reading says that the plague was a "cocktail" of diseases, does that mean that it was made up many different diseases? If so, how could there be similar symptoms if there are so many different kinds of diseases in affect?
my other questions were:
- what is Anthrax?
- In the reading it says that it originated in the Steppes with the Mongol horses and the wind then carried their stench around the world, affecting everywhere else. Could a disease really be spread by stench?
Ok, for my post I asked myself a couple of questions.
1) How did the Chinese develop such good natural immunities to diseases, only to see those natural defenses disappear in the face SARS and other viruses which plague the Far East today. Why haven't the Chinese developed Natural immunities to those?
I did a quick bit of research on this question and found that it took a very long time for the Chinese to develop immunities to such diseases that lived and breaded on a farm. However, maybe, years from now, when the rest of the world if suffering at the hands of the Asian Bird Flu virus and the Chinese have developed natural immunities, we will look at the Chinese with envy?
For my second question, which I didn't answer I said:
2)We saw that the Bubonic plague infected most of the world, bar Russia and the Far North. However, it didn't seem that sub-saharan Africa became infected. Was this because of space (like the Far North) or was it for some other reason? My first answer seems a little bit unrealistic because there were so many regular trade routes south, that it would be hard to stop the spread of the disease. Right?
I may have read it wrong but at one point in the reading it said something about that in the sources from the time it was never clear if the "flea" was the killer, so are we sure now that it was indeed the spreader of this entire plague. It seems like from Wikipedia it is, but what happens if it was from something else and we are wrong? What I thought was interesting was that the population was decreasing so rapidly that the bodies were buried in pits and quicklime was spread over to increase decomposition. I decided to research quicklime because I was unsure what it was. text of link
Really it is burnt lime which produces a white powder of chemical substance. Which I think is interesting as how they decided to use that. If they were so clever with this why didnt they try to improve hygene, obviously is the most important problem. It may not sure the deaths but I'm sure it would improve mortality rate. Also did the remedies that the doctors prescribed ever work?
I think it's really interesting reading about the bubonic plague. If the bubonic plague were to come back in today's world would more people survive because of the better medicine and medical techniques?
In the reading it said that Anthrax was claimed to be a contributing factor in the plague, and that it was not impossible that it actually was. I've heard of Anthrax, but I wasn't really sure of what it was. So I did a Google search.
I found on a Wikipedia article on it and found out that it's one of the oldest recorded diseases and it is a disease of grazing animals.
After reading this, something that interested me was how there are different mutations of the disease. Also, after the reading, I question if there were more efficient things people could of done to stop the spread of the plague. Anf if the plague began to spread today- how would we fight against it?
I researched the variations of it a little more than what the reading told us.
text of link
Q:What is Anthrax? Why was it thought to be a contributing factor of the plague?
A: It is an acute disease in humans and animals that is highly lethal in some forms. Anthrax is one of the oldest recorded diseases of grazing animals such as sheep and cattle. Something that I found that kind of interesting is that it is believed to be the Sixth Plague mentioned in the Book of Exodus in the Bible. I got this here
It is thought to be a contributing factor because there are some similar symptoms and there were infected cows that were used as meat in rural places in Europe before people started getting sick. I found out why people thought it was a contributing factor here()
Q:The plague affected the animals first? How long did the animals have it before the humans did? Did a lot of animals die from it?
A: I couldn´t find much on this, but I did find that dogs, cats, chickens, oxen, donkeys sheep showed the same symptoms and died of the same disease. And almost none, or very few, who showed these symptoms, were cured. I found that information
here .
Mr. G,
I lost my post because i clicked backspace...sorry its late
First off, I didnt know what Anthrax was, so I found out from Wikipedia that it it a pathogen and what the reading is trying to say is that multiple pathogens must have been present in order for the diease to spread that way.
I also thought it was interesting to see that the two chronicles from Arabia and Itaty thought that the plague orginiated in China and spread from there. It is a good example of European/Muslim connections.
There were several words in the reading that I didn't know the meaning of, so I looked them up on dictionary.com, and here they are:
Anthrax:
an infectious, often fatal disease of cattle, sheep, and other mammals, caused by Bacillus anthracis, transmitted to humans by contaminated wool, raw meat, or other animal products.
(Anthrax, at the time of the Plague, was thought to have conicided in causing the Plague along with other pathogens. Fernandez Armesto, the writer of our textbook claims this impossible.)
Pandemic:
(of a disease) prevalent throughout an entire country, continent, or the whole world; epidemic over a large area.
Eco-niche:
In ecology, a niche (pronounced "nich," "neesh" or "nish") is a term describing the relational position of a species or population in its ecosystem. A shorthand definition is that a niche is how an organism makes a living. The ecological niche describes how an organism or population responds to the distribution of resources and competitors (e. g., by growing when resources are abundant, and predators, parasites and pathogens are scarce)
Sheikh (the person that "delayed a banquet for Ibn Battuta"):
(in Islamic countries) the patriarch of a tribe or family; chief: a term of polite address.
Then I found this pretty cool page from the BBC about how with our current climate change (warmer and wetter weather), the Plague has started to reappear more widely.
Climate Change and Plague
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