1. The Black Plague

2. What is a plague?
Any widespread and usually highly contagious disease with a high fatality rate

3. 1347. A ship arrives in Messina, a city on the island of Sicily off the south coast of Italy.
The ship sailed into the busy harbour. It had come from ports on the Eastern Mediterranean where it took on a cargo of spices and other goods.

4. When the ship landed, the dockworkers were surprised to see sick sailors staggering onto the shore.

5. Everywhere on the deck of the ship lay dead or dying sailors.
They had black and purplish blotches on their skin and strange, egg-shaped swellings in their armpits.
The dying were coughing, moaning, and vomiting blood.

6. Within a few days most of the sailors were dead.
People who cared for them also developed the terrible symptoms.
Soon people all over the city began to fall ill and die.

7. The disease that the sailors had brought was the Black Death or bubonic plague. They had caught it in the Eastern seaports they visited.

8. The Black Death was spread by fleas on the rats that lived in urban areas and on board ships

9. There was no cure for the disease and over the next two years it spread all over Europe.
About one-third to one-half of the people in Europe – 25 million people- eventually died of the Black Death.
Some villages and towns were completely wiped out.

10. BLACK DEATH VIDEO & ASSIGNMENT
Video: 50 minutes

11. If half the people in Canada suddenly died of a terrible disease, how do you think it would affect our society?

12. What was the Black Death(1348)?
A contagious, often fatal epidemic disease caused by the bacterium Yersinia (syn. Pasteurella) pestis, transmitted from person to person or by the bite of fleas from an infected rodent, especially a rat, and characterized by chills, fever, vomiting, diarrhea, and the formation of buboes.

15. Ring Around the Rosie Speculation:
The “roses” refer to boils that people with the plague develop
“posies”-flowers people carried to avoid the plague
Sneezing was an early sign of infection
“we all fall down” refers to people dying
No record of nursery rhyme until early 1880’s
Could be that the rhyme existed orally but was not recorded in text for centuries
Ring Around the Rosie
"Ring around the Rosy
Pocket full of Posy
Ashes, Ashes,
We all Fall Down"

16. Does it still exist?

17. What do you suppose it was like for the people in the Middle Ages to experience the Black Plague?
MOVIE

18. What are some other examples of plagues in history?
AIDS
Malaria
Typhus
Cholera
Small Pox
Spanish Flu

19. What would the world be like if we had another black plague?

20. What would your life be like?

21. Is this even a possibility?

22. Could H1N1 be another form of the Black Plague?

23. Who did the people turn to for help during the Black Plague?

24. Who do we turn to for help now?

25. What are the similarities between a plague in the middle ages and now?
Scary – cheerleader flu shot video

26. What are the differences ?