The spread of the black death.
Poland
Poland, tell us your secret.
Poland is the
oldnew Madagascar.If I remember correctly, Poland’s secret is that the jews where being blamed all over europe (as usual) as scapegoats for the black plague. Poland was the only place that accepted Jewish refugees, so pretty much all of them moved there.
Now, one of the major causes of getting the plague was poor hygiene. This proved very effective for the plague because everyone threw their poop into the streets because there were no sewers, and literally no one bathed because it was against their religion. Unless they were jewish, who actually bathed relatively often. When all the jews moved to Poland, they brought bathing with them, and so the plague had little effect there.
Milan survived by quarantining its city and burning down the house of anyone showing early symptoms, with the entire family inside it.
I reblogged this tons of times, but the Milan info is new.
Damn Italy, you scary.
Poland: “Hey, feeling a bit down? Have a quick wash! There, you see? All better”
Milan: “Aw, feeling a bit sick are we? BURN MOTHERFUCKER, BURN!!!!!”
Also, this might have something to do with it: from what I understand, O blood type is uncommonly… common in Poland. Something to do with large families in small villages and a LOT of intermarriage. The black plague was caused by a bacterium that produced, in its waste in the human body, wastes that very closely mimic the “B” marker sugars on red blood cells that keep the body from attacking its own immune system. Anyone who has a B blood type had an immune system that was naturally desensitized to the presence of the bacterium, and therefore was more prone to developing the disease. Anyone who had an O type was doubly lucky because the O blood type means the total absence of ANY markers, A or B, meaning that their bodys’ immune system would react quickly and violently against the invaders, while someone with an A may show symptoms and recover more slowly, while someone with B would have just died. Because O is a recessive blood type, it shows in higher numbers when more people who carry the recessive genes marry other people who also carry the recessive gene. Poland, which has a nearly 700 year history of being conquered by or partnering with every other nation in the surrounding area, was primarily an agricultural country, focused around smaller, farming communities where people were legally tied to, and required to work, “their” land, and so historically never “spread” their genes across a large area. The economy was, and had been, unstable for a very long period of time leading up to the plague, the government had been ineffective and had very little reach in comparison to the armies of the other countries around for a very very long time, and so its people largely remained in small communities where multiple generations of cross-familial inbreeding could have allowed for this more recessive gene to show up more frequently. Thus, there could be a higher percentage of O blood types in any region of the country, guaranteeing less spread of the illness and moving slower when it did manage to travel. Combine this with the fact that there were very few large, urban centers where the disease would thrive, and with the above facts, and you’ve got a lovely recipe for avoiding the plague.
Interestingly enough, as a result from the plague, the entirety of Europe now has a higher percentage of people with O blood type than any other region of the world.
WHY IS THIS ALL SO COOL
When Tumblr teaches you more about the plague than 12 years of school ever did.
Just to throw a nod in, as a medieval historian, this is all credible, and is the leading theory as to the plagues effectiveness at this point. So. Enjoy your new knowledge!
Wow. This is cool knowledge!
Not long before the plague started a pope had declared cats were a symbol of paganism which led to most Christians getting rid of their cats. The rat population skyrocketed in Christian Europe and that spread the plague at an alarming rate. Jewish families still kept cats and that’s thought to be another factor in why plague was less prevalent among them
that last remark sounds…suspiciously false, so I did a quick google search to see what I could find. You can read more here: https://museumhack.com/black-cats-black-death/
Like a lot of other myths about
history from the Middle Ages, the idea that Europeans wiped out cats and
then paid for it with the Black Death makes more sense the less you
think about it. But it starts to fall apart once you roll it around in
the ol’ brainpan.First, consider the dates: Pope
Gregory IX’s papal bull was issued between 1232 and 1234. The Black
Death came in 1347. I suppose it’s possible that Vox in Rama
simply set the stage for a cat-killing trend that would, generations
later, result in the Black Death. But this means that a papal bull that didn’t
tell people to wipe out cats and was only sent to Mainz somehow
influenced the majority of people throughout Europe to kill off all
their cats, and to stick to it over the course of the next 115 years.Further, the plague wasn’t a one-off
event in Europe. It kept happening, let’s say once per generation, until
the 1700s. The theory that plague pandemics happen amidst a cat vacuum
doesn’t hold up: Europe didn’t keep its cat population depleted for
nearly 500 years. Cats breed quickly, know how to survive on their own,
and are hard to catch. Good luck keeping them down for half a
millennium.6The author shares other info as well, if you wish to read the whole thing.
Jewish communities WERE less prone to the plague, that is correct at least. However, this wasn’t thanks to their love of cats. It was mostly due to their 1) insular communities, considering that much of Europe prosecuted their race and faith, and 2) their comparatively more rigorous hygiene practices due to their religious law. Poland was (again, comparatively) tolerant of Jewish communities, so this aided in preventing spread of the plague as they were surrounded by people who handled their bodily fluids much more seriously than most.
Wide Spread Interests 