ShortHand: The Black Death
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Jaa, kukko saapuu paikalle ja lautasella on kaikki hyvin.
Saarioinen. Valmista tuli.
Ettehän te nyt voi toimia niin, että teillä valtavat valikoimat, mutta halvimmat hinnat. Kyllä voidaan. No niin,hän te kyllä tottahan toikin kyllä, että voitte. todellisuudessa. Joo. Prisma. Iso valikoima. Pienet hinnat.
Hello. Yes. Welcome to Another Shorthand. It's gonna be gross. Great. At the beginning of October, in the year of the incarnation of the Son of God thirteen forty six. Twelve Genoese galleys entered the harbour of Messina. In their bones they bore so virulent a disease that anyone who only spoke to them was seized by a mortal illness, and in no manner could evade death.
It's very good, isn't it?
Those are not my words. They are the words of a man named Michael Platenius, a resident of Messina. In as he said, thirteen forty six. Messina is a harbour city in Sicily, and Michael wrote this after he watched these ships come in. And the ensuing carnage that ravaged his city as a result. And then that carnage spread
all through Europe. And into Asia. When those twelve ships from the Black Sea docked in Messina The town was met with a horrific sight. Most of the sailors on board were already dead and rotting. And those who were still alive were gravely ill. and covered in black boils that oozed blood and pus. I'm still on the Tudor side of TikTok and I was watching one this morning about Henry the Eighth and how his ulcers could be smelled from sixty feet away. Oh and there is documentation that his doctor at least once had to remove worms that were living in his legs.
Oh my god.
Yeah.
Good. Let's keep up the theme of this episode. Um but no, I know we just finished recording the Nosphara two shorthand.
What was the initial outbreak that sparked the Black Death in Europe?
Yes. That you will have already heard if you're being good and listening to all of them. It kind of just feels like that, right?
Death comes on a ship. Yes. But um it did.
Yeah. Yeah. The authorities ordered the fleet out of the harbour, but it was already too late, and over the next seven years what that ship brought in killed anywhere between twenty five to two hundred million people.
Just seven years. Mm-hmm.
Earning it the enduring name.
The Black Death
But where did it come from? What was it? How did it spread and how did it leave a lasting impact?
On those who survived? This is the shorthand. The Black Death
remains
to this day
nearly seven hundred years later. The greatest ever demographic disaster ever to hit humanity. And just to be clear, I'm sure everybody knows this because they're very smart, but you know, just to clarify, the Black Death is just the name of this particular plague outbreak. It's not the name of the disease itself, it's just the name of this era. And it's important to know that because this wasn't the first plague of its kind, and it also wouldn't be the last. In the sixth century, Byzantium was hit by the plague of Justinian. And in the mid nineteenth century, so after the Black Death, China would suffer another outbreak. But neither of these pandemics came close
to the to the Black Death of the Middle Ages.
Firstly, let's talk about what the Black Death actually was. For a long, long time nobody really knew. But after the pulp from the teeth of plague victims were dug up from a mass grave in Italy, we now know what the Black Death was caused by. It was an infection of the bacterium Yacenia
pestis.
This bacteria is
usually found in small mammals and their fleas. And the most common way the plague was spread is thought to have been through the bite of an infected fleet. And these fleas lived on rats and other rodents, which like to live around humans. They infected the rats, the plague killed the rats, and so the fleas would then go looking for alternative sources of food. I read that once like a rat colony is infested with plagues, it will kill all of the rats in that colony within two weeks. Wow. But it doesn't kill the flea. This is the key thing. The flea is like a carrier, it's not affected by the plague. So I think obviously again you guys are very smart, but a lot of people mistakenly think it's carried by the rats.
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Chapters
4 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:01–2:24
2
What was the initial outbreak that sparked the Black Death in Europe?
2:24–6:48
3
Why did the disease spread so rapidly through Italian ports and across Europe?
6:48–25:43
4
How did the Mongol siege of Kaffa lead to biological warfare and spread the plague?
25:43–32:05