Notes September 14

The Plague 

• The infection was brought to England by ships with diseased rats infested with fleas on board. 
• The plague swung east to China and south to Caffa. 
• Biological warfare had begun, with cities catapulting the rotting bodies over their walls. 
• Red swollen sores appeared on the victims, and they began to cough up blood and mucus. The infection spread very rapidly. 
• The young and defenseless were taken first, but no one was safe from the plague. 
• The healthy left the infected to die, not wanted to get sick themselves. 
• No one wanted to make any human contact out of fear of death. 
• 1348, London's population had been close to 100,000. In the first wave of the plague, 300 people perished every day. 
• The dead were laid pointing East so that when Judgement day came, they would face Jerusalem. But during the plague, corpses were thrown into pits by masses. The people of the city had no time to dig graves before another hundred people were dead. 
• The people assumed the plague was caused by a jolt in the atmosphere, called miasma. 
• Antidotes were devised but they had but little effect on the victims. 
• The survivors then took to claiming that they were being punished for turning away from God. 
• Everything began to cost more, accounting for the lack of workers. 
• Serfs were hard to come by after the first shock of the Plague had passed. 
• The social order was shaken, with lords having to listen to the demands of his workers, or suffer and watch his land go to ruin. 
• Burials for royal people were called transi tombs where their image in life was placed on top and they rotted in  the bottom. 
• The crown was passed to Richard of Bordeaux.