What if a plague hit the United States?

Objective: Brainstorm the possible effects of a nation-wide epidemic.

BRAINSTORM
1. How would people react this disease?

2. Write down what effects a disease like this might have on our
country and the people in it in the chart below.
Short Term Effects on the Long Term Effects on the
United States United States

Imagine that in the last four years a strange disease killed half of the
people in the United States. The mysterious illness caused those
inflicted to cough up blood, and pus and blood-filled growths to
develop on their bodies. The disease spread easily from person to
person and though doctors gave a lot of advice, nothing worked to
stop it.

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 What was the Black Plague?
Objective: Explain what the Black Plague was and what caused it.

Black Death Vocabulary

Epidemic- (n.) a Pandemic- (adj.) Plague- (n.) a contagious bacterial Yersina Pestis- (n.) Buboes- (n.) a swollen
widespread widespread over a whole disease characterized by fever and the bacteria the growths that occur at
occurrence of a country or the world insanity and the formation of buboes and causes plague lymph nodes in the
disease sometimes an infection of the lungs armpit or groin

WHAT IS THE BLACK DEATH/BLACK PLAGUE?

Overview from History.com, Bubonic Plague from the Discovery Channel’s “Filthy Cities”
Decoding the Black Death from The Guardian, Coroner’s Report: Plague
Watch one, two, three, or all of the clips on the Black Death linked above, then read the passage below and answer the
question at the bottom of this box.

UNDERSTANDING THE BLACK DEATH

Today, scientists understand that the Black Death, now known as the plague, is spread by a bacillus [bacteria] called Yersinia pestis. (The
French biologist Alexandre Yersin discovered this germ at the end of the 19th century.) They know that the bacillus travels from person to
person pneumonically, or through the air, as well as through the bite of infected fleas and rats. Both of these pests could be found almost
everywhere in medieval Europe, but they were particularly at home aboard ships of all kinds–which is how the deadly plague made its way
through one European port city after another. Not long after it struck Messina [Italy], the Black Death spread to the port of Marseilles in
France and the port of Tunis in North Africa. Then it reached Rome and Florence, two cities at the center of an elaborate web of trade routes.
By the middle of 1348, the Black Death had struck Paris, Bordeaux, Lyon and London.
Source: “Black Death,” History.com

According the video(s) and the passage What caused the Black Death? Why did the Black Death spread so far
above, what was the Black Death? and kill so many people?

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 How did the plague spread from China to Europe?
Objective: Describe how the plague spread and its connection to the Mongol Empire.

From the beginnings of the Mongol Empire, the Mongol Khans fostered trade and sponsored numerous caravans. The very size of the
Mongol Empire encouraged the wider dissemination of goods and ideas throughout Eurasia, as merchants and others could now travel from
one end of the empire to another with greater security, guaranteed by the Pax Mongolica.
Source: “The Mongol Empire in World History” by Timothy May from North Georgia College and State University on World History Connected.
http://worldhistoryconnected.press.illinois.edu/5.2/may.html.

Source: Decameron Web, Brown University (adapted) from the NYS Global History and Geography
Regents Exam.

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 Based on the quote and maps above, How did the plague spread? What role did the Mongols play in the
where did the Black Death originate [start]? spread of the Black Death?

A Description of the Plague

Directions: Read through the passage below and answer the questions in the right hand column.
1 Michael Platiensis lived in Messina, the first port city in Europe to feel the effects of the plague. The following 1. Who wrote this text? when
2 document is his description of the arrival and progress of the disease in 1347. was it written?

3 At the beginning of October, in the year of the

4 incarnation of the Son of God 1347, twelve
5 Genoese galleys . . . entered the harbor of Messina.
6 In their bones they bore so virulent a disease that
7 anyone who only spoke to them was seized by a 2. Is this a primary or secondary
8 mortal illness and in no manner could evade death. source? How do you know?
9 The infection spread to everyone who had any
10 contact with the diseased. Those infected felt
11 themselves penetrated by a pain throughout their
12 whole bodies and, so to say, undermined. Then
13 there developed on the thighs or upper arms a boil
14 about the size of a lentil which the people called
15 "burn boil". This infected the whole body, and 3. According to the author, what
16 penetrated it so that the patient violently vomited brought the plague to Messina?
17 blood. This vomiting of blood continued without
18 intermission for three days, there being no means of
19 healing it, and then the patient expired.
20
21
22 Not only all those who had speech with them died,
23 but also those who had touched or used any of their things. When the inhabitants of Messina discovered
24 that this sudden death emanated from the Genoese ships they hurriedly ordered them out of the harbor and
25 town. But the evil remained and caused a fearful outbreak of death. Soon men hated each other so much 4. What symptoms did the author
26 that if a son was attacked by the disease his father would not tend him. If, in spite of all, he dared to observe in victims of the plague?
27 approach him, he was immediately infected and was bound to die within three days. Nor was this all; all
28 those dwelling in the same house with him, even the cats and other domestic animals, followed him in death.

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29 As the number of deaths increased in Messina many desired to confess their sins to the priests and to draw
30 up their last will and testament. But ecclesiastics, lawyers and notaries refused to enter the houses of the
31 diseased.
32
33 Soon the corpses were lying forsaken in the houses. No ecclesiastic, no son, no father and no relation dared
34 to enter, but they hired servants with high wages to bury the dead. The houses of the deceased remained
35 open with all their valuables, gold and jewels. . . . When the catastrophe had reached its climax the
36 Messinians resolved to emigrate. One portion of them settled in the vineyards and fields, but a larger portion
37 sought refuge in the town of Catania. The disease clung to the fugitives and accompanied them everywhere 5. What methods did people use
38 where they turned in search of help. Many of the fleeing fell down by the roadside and dragged themselves to stop the spread of the plague?
39 into the fields and bushes to expire. Those who reached Catania breathed their last in the hospitals there.
40 The terrified citizens would not permit
41 the burying of fugitives from Messina
42 within the town, and so they were all
43 thrown into deep trenches outside the
44 walls.
45
46 Thus the people of Messina dispersed
47 over the whole island of Sicily and with
48 them the disease, so that innumerable
49 people died. The town of Catania lost
50 all its inhabitants, and ultimately sank
51 into complete oblivion. Here not only 6. Historian and author, Leonard
52 the "burn blisters" appeared, but there W. Courie wrote that “Faith in
53 developed gland boils on the groin, the religion decreased after the
54 thighs, the arms, or on the neck. At plague.” What evidence from this
55 first these were of the size of a hazel account might support Courie’s
56 nut, and developed accompanied by claim?
57 violent shivering fits, which soon
58 rendered those attacked so weak that
59 they could not stand up, but were
60 forced to lie in their beds consumed by
61 violent fever. Soon the boils grew to
62 the size of a walnut, then to that of a hen's egg or a goose's egg, and they were exceedingly painful, and
63 irritated the body, causing the sufferer to vomit blood. The sickness lasted three days, and on the fourth, at
64 the latest, the patient succumbed. As soon as anyone in Catania was seized with a headache and shivering,
65 he knew that he was bound to pass away within the specified time. . . . When the plague had attained its
66 height in Catania, the patriarch endowed all ecclesiastics, even the youngest, with all priestly powers for the
67 absolution of sin which he himself possessed as bishop and patriarch. But the pestilence raged from

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68 October 1347 to April 1348. The patriarch himself was one of the last to be carried off. He died fulfilling his
69 duty. At the same time, Duke Giovanni, who had carefully avoided every infected house and every patient,
70 died.

This account is from Michael Platiensis (1357), quoted in Johannes Nohl, The Black Death, trans. C.H. Clarke (London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd.,
1926), pp. 18-20. http://web.archive.org/web/20091001151555/http://www.boisestate.edu/courses/westciv/plague/07.shtml