Otherways- Fiction Fanatics

I doubt there’s a single disease that is better known than the infamous plague. Yes, that plague, also affectionately known as the black death, the one that swept through Europe starting around 1348 and eventually claiming somewhere between 25 and 50 percent of the population. Even in the modern world, where we understand the causes of contagion, a disease that infects thousands would cause widespread panic. It didn’t help anything that the damn thing decided to come in three different, but equally scary to the populace, forms, all caused by the same fun organism. Though accounts of the time are understandably somewhat sketchy, bubonic plague was the most common type, named for the giant swellings it causes in the lymph nodes, particularly under the armpits, called buboes. This type was extremely painful, and without the benefit of antibiotics, a person that showed these swellings could expect to live only a few months at best. There were survivors, but not many.

Pneumonic plague is the only form that lends itself to human-to-human direct transference. It attacks the lungs, spreading when the victim coughs. Due to destruction of lung tissue, secondary pneumonia, and the effects of the the disease itself, sufferers might have only weeks to live, and survival was unlikely.

Lastly, is the septic version of the plague that attacks the victim’s blood. Since blood circulation has to be pretty efficient for a person to survive, this form spreads throughout the body very quickly, and has been reported by doctors of the time to kill within hours of the symptoms being observed.

Add to this scene the open sewers, the general lack of hygiene, trash collection, and the accumulation of rotting dead in a world without refrigeration, and it begins to sound like a scene from Dante’s Inferno. Bending between the victims, trying to save them, were the Plague Doctors. These men were brave souls indeed, but still menacing to look at. With full masks often made of leather and iron into the shape of a bird, gloves, and cloaks, they tended to look more like a giant scavenging flock of vultures than like men rendering aid.

Even after death you weren’t safe. In some places the dead were stacked in catacombs, in others left in mass graves. In some places the death toll was so high that entire homes were stuffed full of corpses and lit on fire. This particular technique was actually somewhat effective, as the fleas that carry the bubonic plague don’t do much biting after they’ve been burned to death.

One brand of human wasn’t afraid to venture into these death pits to retrieve whatever gold or other treasures the victims might have had. Many of these grave robbers had been part of the group of merchants that was really just beginning to flourish at the time. With trade routes cut off, society in shambles, and no other way to make a living, they became ghouls. The thing that made them not fear a trip into the pits of death or a house with dying victims was a concoction they believed to be magic: Thieves’ Oil.

Before every venture, they’d anoint every inch of their bodies with this aromatic mix of vinegar and herbs, believing it made them impervious to the plague. Strange thing is, it pretty much did. Not because of any magical properties, but because the herbs steeped in it repel fleas. No flea bites, no plague. Unless of course they bumbled into a house with people actively coughing from pneumonic plague, but then they wouldn’t live long enough to tell anyone that their magic failed.

Just something to think about, as apparently a young child contracted the plague while camping in Yosmite just recently. Good thing we have antibiotics and flea spray, right?

Cheers,

Michelle