The reason that the mayors and town controlling nobles had stated to the town was, "Poor sanitation leads to sicknesses."
In the reading, it states that the "plague" began from a crew ship that docked in the Black Sea in Messina, Sicily. First, at that time no one really knew what was the cause of these plagues and why people were dying. This was just an assumption just so that there can be a reason for what was going on.
Their evidence for this statement was that sanitation workers were the first people to die. Eventually people from the towns noticed that the sanitation workers were not dying and somehow believed that the workers became immune to the diseases or had magical powers. Everyone in these towns were at risk in getting the disease and dying. Just because the sanitation workers were the ones dealing with wastes does not mean that they were going to be the first and only ones to get the diseases and die. Everyone was at risk.
I believe that yes poor sanitation can lead to diseases being spread within a town. According to research, the orignial cause of the Black Plague was thought to be "Yersinia pestis" which is a bacteria commonly present in populations with infested ground rodents. Now it could be that if this information is accurate that because of poor sanitation, it lead to rodents multiplying their population which lead to the cause of some of the diseases. I also believe that this statement is false because if everyone knew the cause was "poor sanitation", then I assume people would have taken action to improve sanitation. And maybe it wouldnt have have spread the way it did. But, at that time no one really knew what was the cause of such massive deaths, just because there was no real information at the point in time.
Background Reading
In October 1347, Italian ships on the Black Sea en route to and from China dock in Messina, Sicily -- their crews are dead or dying. Whatever is killing them quickly spreads ashore. Within a month, it passes through Sicily and moves back out over water. By January 1348, it has penetrated France via Marseille and North Africa via Tunis, and by July 1348, it spreads through France, Spain, Italy, Switzerland, Eastern Hungary, and Southern England. This is all the more amazing given that at this time it took a person one to three months to travel from London to Rome. The plague died out in the winters and was resurrected in the springs. At the end of 1349, it had spread throughout the British Isles and Scandinavia and continued to move east.
The death toll was massive -- the "official" figure is one-third of Europe dead between 1348 and 1351, when it temporarily abated, but keep in mind that in some towns the death toll was 90 percent -- in others 10 percent. Further, the poor and anyone else living in close quarters (monks, for instance) died at a higher rate. Many monasteries were completely wiped out, but the death rates among the nobility and the nobility of the church were very low. Understandably, people wanted to know why this was happening to them. Here are the four prominent hypotheses of the day:
The claim of academics and physicians: The plague was the result of a triple conjunction of Saturn, Jupiter, and Mars on March 20, 1345.
The Roman Catholic Church's claim: God's wrath -- it was a punishment for the people's sins.
The claim of the mayors and town-controlling nobles: Poor sanitation. Dumping waste in the streets leads to sickness (a revolutionary claim at the time -- no one actually knew this to be true).
The claim of the masses (i.e., everyone else): The Jews are poisoning the wells.
Here is the "evidence" used by each group, respectively, to support its claim:
Medicine at the time was based on astrology and astronomy. Most physical sickness was attributed to poor alignment of the stars. The conjunction had happened, and it was a rare celestial event. Other events had been tied to celestial causes. Many were waiting to see what the triple conjunction would cause, and when the Black Plague occurred, they felt that they had found out.
The Church said, "Look around." Plunder, looting, rape, prostitution, war, and drinking were everywhere. God's wrath had shown itself in destructive ways before -- the people of Noah's time were hit with a flood, and the people of Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed.
The sanitation workers were among the first to die, and other diseases were suspected to be related to poor sanitation.
Christians tortured "confessions" out of Jews. The Jews were believed to be "jealous" of the Christians (because, it was thought, the Jews knew "in their hearts" that they were damned). The lepers had been blamed for poisoning the wells and causing the typhus outbreak in 1320 (after the Black Plague, it was believed that the Jews set them up to it).
Here are some problems people at the time saw with the evidence:
Nobody but the academics and physicians believed their explanation!
If God's wrath already has descended, there's no reason to change one's behavior. The attitude was roughly, "If we're already doomed, why alter our behavior?"
Later sanitation workers appeared to be immune (unknown to the people, they'd been exposed and had developed a resistance). If it really was poor sanitation, why weren't they still dying? In fact, this immunity among sanitation workers caused many people to think the sanitation workers had magical powers. People followed them on their street-cleaning routes, trying to absorb some of the immunity. Others, more desperate, actually applied waste to themselves, thinking that it would keep the disease away.
So many Jews died too (Why would any community poison itself?). The other problem is that the plague was present in areas where no Jews lived.
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I agree with this argument because yes, everyone was at the risk but there were some inconsistencies by reading the article.
ReplyDeletePeople thought sanitation workers had a magical power, it wouldn't be true if it was really caused by sanitation. on one has control of the disaster. This person made a very clear response by searching.
At the beginning, I thought the population had a strong argument about the sanitation; but, it wasn't the case because the sanitation workers didn't die; therefore the problem didn’t come from the waste. Furthermore if it was the case, as you said in your text, they would resolve this problem as quick as possible. Thus, this argument could not prove this fact.
ReplyDeleteI totally agree with you that if poor sanitation was the cause of death of the people then why the sanitation workers were were not dying. Even though, people are more prone to diseases since diseases spread through poor sanitation, during that time it was seen that the sanitation workers became resistant to it. Then how come they became resistant to it if poor sanitation was the cause of Black Plague. The disease surely had other causes. I agree with you with this idea.
ReplyDeleteAmong all the facts mentioned in the reading, the poor sanitation theory seems to be the most logical. However, the fact that the sanitation workers were not vulnerable to the black plague makes the argument sound absurd. If poor sanitation had been a main cause of the plague, then the workers would have been among the first habitats to be extinguished. However, it was discovered that they had some magic powers that protect them from getting infected. You are right; the workers were not the only people who died. The entire population of Europe was at risk of getting completely wiped out. The death rate especially was high in monasteries which had nothing to do with waste dumping in the streets. Most frequently they were located in remote areas, far away from the busy street of towns and cities.
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