FIRST COMMUNIONS

First Communions

First Communions

Since the beginning of the human race, there were many devastating events, but nothing compares with the black plague. Plague was the extreme detriment of thriving population of Europe during the 1300's. This caused stress, decreased tolerance to religious Jews, the family pulled apart, and worst of all, broke people, but the true meaning of Christianity. The destruction of Europe during and after the plague, and to this day, is beyond compare. Plague was the malignant natural disaster in European history.

Many people think that the plague was only just for Europe but it is not. The plague originated in Central Asia, the Gobi desert during the 1320's. He quickly moved to the south and east to China, it turns out, a crushing blow to already weaken the nation. In conjunction with all other natural disasters, while the plague ripped to pieces by the Chinese population. From 1331 to 1353 ranged from a plague of two-thirds of China's population.

Then the plague began to move west, infecting India, Persia, Egypt and on his way to Europe. In October 1347 the port of Messina in Sicily, Italy, and a fleet of twelve Genoese (Genoa, Italy), merchant ships arrived in port. At one of the ships, the entire crew for seventeen years was found dead in boat harbourmasters. They tried to turn the ships back, but the ships were docked long enough for foreign pests to settle ashore. Foreign pests in fact, black Asian rats, carrying fleas. Now this incident is usually not too unusual, and serious accidents, but the fleas were infected by bacteria and by eating rats, like their owners, they are infected as well.

The reason that this happens because the bacteria Yersinia Pestis, who normally lives safely in the stomach of a flea, was playing on the original course. Excessive multiplication of bacteria in the flea, fleas blocked stomach, causing him to starve. When you try to feed on the host, typically rodents, fleas would regurgitate the bacteria into the blood of its host, resulting in a host infected with plague bacilli. As more and more hosts had died, the fleas were looking desperately new owners. They fleas to feed people as a last resort to try to soothe their hungry bodies. Once people have been infected with the disease, it quickly spread like wildfire, through towns and cities. People began to suddenly get the "egg size of buboes (hence the name bubonic plague), under the arm pits and groin. Then, purple spots appeared, caused by bleeding. Buboes sometimes burst, oozing blood and pus. Terrible stench was associated with the disease - blood of the victim, breath, sweat, urine and it was a terrible smell. “(Pg.34, Corzine, Phyllis, (1997), Black Death, San Diego, Calif.: Lucent Books Inc)

At that time, little was known about the plague. Germs and diseases were completely unknown concept to the doctors of the medieval period. Doctors believed that using expensive magic potions, spices, bloodshed, and many more tedious and inappropriate treatment can help a ...