Plague and Medicine in the Renaissance

This essay hasn't yet been marked by one of our teachers

You can view 13 essays on History Projects that have been Marked by Teachers

The first 200 words of this essay...

The Plague and Medicine Richard Mäekallas

In the Renaissance, life was much shorter than today, you were lucky if you lived to be more than 30 years old. The main reasons for deaths were war, starvation and disease. The plague was one of the most feared diseases of all. This struck Italian cities about in the middle of the 14 century at the time of the Black Death. The Black Death probably consisted of two main diseases: one which was carried by the fleas on rats and the other one from human contact. But medicine wasn't vey improved by that time and people had many reasons for why they thought so many people were dying of it. Some thought it was a punishment from God, in which people whipped themselves, cleaned up cities etc to ask forgiveness from God. And some thought it came from a peculiar arrangement of the planets. Either way, none of the treatments had any affect.

The plague returned at regular intervals in the Renaissance period. People also thought that giving charity and going on pilgrimages pleased God, and then they wouldn't get the plague.

About 11 000 people out of a population