God's Chosen

To people of the Middle Ages, plague spread in seemingly random ways. This brutal reality motivated a desperate search for solutions. The invisible world encroached on the visible one and even those who were physically strong fell to the disease. It would be easy then, to surmise, that the invisible controller, God, would be picking and choosing those select few who would survive. After all, if there was some reason behind all the terrible madness then it must be something more powerful than the plague itself.

Although the mystical spread of Black Death was debunked long ago, the same version of God still exists today. People believe that some higher conscious is killing and torturing the hapless select that somehow deserve it. The reasoning is also insidiously extended to banal activities such as sports. Medieval thinking seems harmless until one considers the passivity that it imbues within otherwise empathetic and caring people.

The invisible exists - it is larger than us - but it exists in ways that we cannot understand. It we could, it would be on a human scale.

By the way, the tiny little killer from centuries ago has a name: the Y. pestis bacteria. Scroll down for more.

~ü

A very interesting blog post from The History Blog (click on above title for link) concerning the (now-known) microbial origins of the Black Death. Yersinia Pestis, the causative pathogen, is known to infect hosts, such as rats and fleas, and then be transmitted to humans.

The three known types of plagues (i.e. bubonic, pneumonic, and septicemic) were responsible for countless deaths in the European continent over a period of 400 years.

The list of symptoms for each type are listed below and are relatively severe and gruesome. Each of them had a mortality rate over 75% with the most severe type, septicemic, killing nearly 100% of those it infected.

Bubonic plague

-Incubation period of 2–6 days, when the bacteria is actively replicating.

-Universally a general lack of energy

-Fever

-Headache and chills occur suddenly at the end of the incubation period

-Swelling of lymph nodes resulting in buboes, the classic sign of bubonic plague. The inguinal nodes are most frequently affected (“boubon” is Greek for “groin.”)

Septicemic plague

-Hypotension

-Hepatosplenomegaly

-Delirium

-Seizures in children

-Shock

-Universally a general lack of energy

-Fever

-Symptoms of bubonic or pneumonic plague are not always present

Pneumonic plague

-Fever

-Chills

-Cough

-Chest pain

-Dyspnea

-Hemoptysis

-Lethargy

-Hypotension

-Shock

-Symptoms of bubonic or septicemic plague are not always present