26 Cat Killings Worsened Plague Spread
Black cats were described as proxies or representations of Satan in alleged Luciferian rituals in the papal bull Vox in Rama, issued by medieval pope Gregory IX in the 1230s. Although Gregory never explicitly ordered their destruction, the decree helped vilify black cats, and several decades of killing followed. The resulting decline in cats allowed Europe’s rat population to grow and may have worsened the spread of the Black Death more than a century later.
27. In 2005, University of Liverpool researchers proposed that medieval plagues helped make around 10 percent of Europeans resistant to HIV. These individuals carry the CCR5-delta32 mutation, which prevents HIV from entering cells in the immune system. A lethal viral hemorrhagic fever repeatedly struck Europe from 1347 to 1660; it increased the mutation’s frequency from 1 in 20,000 to 1 in 10.
28. According to legend, the Bavarian village of Oberammergau vowed on October 28, 1633, to perform a Passion play every 10 years if God spared it from bubonic plague, which had reportedly killed 81 residents, half the population, in 33 days. Reportedly nobody died after the vow, and the villagers staged their first performance in 1634. The village continued the tradition with several exceptions, and COVID-19 delayed the scheduled 2020 production until 2022.
29. During plague epidemics in 17th-century Europe, many plague doctors were not licensed or properly trained physicians, and cities recruited volunteers, second-rate doctors, or doctors just beginning their careers. They were hired by cities to treat infected persons regardless of income, particularly the poor, but they seldom cured anyone. Their principal public duties consisted of registering deaths and infections from plague for demographic purposes, performing autopsies and taking the last wills of the patients. Other people preyed upon desperate families, charging them for special treatments or fake cures.
30. The iconic 17th-century plague doctor costume may have protected wearers during bubonic plague outbreaks, although not for the reasons doctors believed. Its birdlike mask held aromatic herbs, spices, flowers, perfume, or vinegar that doctors thought would block miasma, the evil-smelling “bad air” blamed for infection. That theory was wrong, but the waxed linen robe prevented plague-carrying fleas from touching the body or clinging to the clothing. Gloves, boots, glass eye coverings, and full-body garments also shielded doctors from splattered blood, lymph, and cough droplets.
31 Plague Fleas Vomited Infectious Blood
Fleas acquired Yersinia pestis by feeding on infected rats or other rodents. The bacteria multiplied within each flea, creating a plug that blocked its stomach, leaving it starving no matter how often it ate. The hungry flea would bite a new host again and again, spitting the blood-laced bacteria into each new wound, passing on the infection, until it finally died of starvation. This cycle of transmission led to large epidemics such as the Black Death in the 14th century.
32. One supposed Black Death remedy instructed people to fart into jars, seal them, and sniff the contents when plague reached their area. Some doctors believed the disease spread through deadly vapors and followed the principle that “like cured like.” They hoped this stored “therapeutic stink” would overpower the infected air, but it could neither prevent nor cure bubonic plague.
33. In a 2007 study, latent herpesvirus infections protected mice against Yersinia pestis, the bacterium that causes bubonic plague. A man named Skip Virgin, a viral immunologist at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, and his colleagues found that the infections increased interferon gamma, placing the immune system on alert. The bacteria then grew more slowly and killed fewer mice.
34. 1665 bubonic plague broke out in London and those with enough money got away to the country. Many of the city’s top doctors also joined the exodus, leaving working-class Londoners without trained physicians. There was no rule of the London College of Physicians that required its members to stay in an outbreak, so they could leave the city freely. Desperate residents turned to unlicensed chemists and quacks who sold secret and unregulated remedies for the plague.
35. The Black Death reached England in 1348, and the Scots were quick to seize the opportunity to hit their weakened neighbor. In 1349 a Scottish army gathered in the Forest of Selkirk to invade England, but the plague descended on the camp and killed some 5,000 soldiers. The survivors fled back over the border, taking the infection with them. By 1350 the disease had spread to all of Scotland and killed a large part of its population.
36 Plague History Spanned Three Pandemics
There have been three major plague pandemics in history. These are the Plague of Justinian in the 6th century, the Black Death in the 14th century, and the Third Plague Pandemic which began in Yunnan Province, China, in 1855. The third pandemic traveled along international shipping routes, and reached port cities across the globe in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The World Health Organization considered it active until 1959, when worldwide casualties fell to 200 per year. The pandemic officially ended, but plague never disappeared, and hundreds of cases are still reported worldwide each year.
37. The first major recorded bubonic plague outbreak, the Plague of Justinian, struck from 541 to 549 and took its name from Byzantine emperor Justinian I. The disease reached Constantinople in 542, infected the emperor, and killed about one-fifth of the imperial capital’s population, although Justinian recovered. The plague spread across the Mediterranean, Europe, and the Near East before recurring until the mid-eighth century. Some historians estimate that two centuries of outbreaks killed between 15 million and 100 million people, equivalent to 25 to 60 percent of Europe’s population, although scholars continue to dispute the scale.
38. European beer steins with pewter lids date to the 14th century bubonic plague, when fly invasions raised sanitary concerns. German authorities required that drinking vessels be covered, and craftsmen began fitting pewter lids to the stoneware mugs that were being developed. The covered design kept flies out of drinks and stayed common for the next 300 years.
39. After plague forced the University of Cambridge to close in 1665, English physicist Isaac Newton returned in 1667 and recorded a proposed cure using toad vomit. The recipe called for hanging a toad by its legs in a chimney for three days until it vomited earth and insects onto yellow wax and died. Newton’s notes directed users to combine the powdered toad, its excretions, and serum into lozenges worn against the infected area to draw out the poison.
40. The Third Plague Pandemic lasted from 1855-1960, a total of 105 years. It started in Yunnan, China and spread to all inhabited continents as ships carried infected people, rats, fleas, and cargo around the world. The pandemic killed between 10 and 12 million people in British Raj India, and another 2.2 million in China. It contributed to at least 15 million deaths worldwide.
41 Haffkine Tested Plague Vaccine Himself
In October 1896, bubonic plague struck Bombay, and the government asked Russian-born bacteriologist Waldemar Haffkine, developer of the first human cholera vaccine, to help. He established a makeshift laboratory in a corridor at Grant Medical College and produced a plague vaccine within three months, despite one assistant suffering a nervous breakdown and two others quitting. In January 1897, Haffkine tested the vaccine on himself before presenting the results to authorities. Officials then inoculated volunteers at Byculla jail, all of whom survived the epidemic, while seven inmates in the untreated control group died.
42. Long before becoming famous for his prophecies, French physician Nostradamus treated plague victims throughout France and Italy during the 16th century. Unlike many contemporary doctors, he rejected bloodletting and emphasized hygiene, fresh air, low-fat diets, and removing infected corpses from city streets. He also created a rose pill, an herbal lozenge made from vitamin-C-rich rose hips, which reportedly relieved some patients with mild cases. His methods made him a local celebrity and earned him financial support from citizens of Provence.
43. Poveglia Island in the Venetian Lagoon served as a quarantine station for incoming ships and cargo from 1793 until after World War II. Venice also used it as one of several islands for isolating plague victims, and some sources estimate that only about 20 people died from plague there. In 1922, authorities converted its buildings into a nursing home and long-term care facility for elderly residents. The facility closed in 1968, leaving the state-owned island and its buildings neglected for decades.
44. During the 14th-century Black Death, Europeans believed the disease spread through foul-smelling, contaminated air. The miasma theory made the stench of disease seem dangerous, so officials lit sweet-smelling wood in public bonfires. People burned incense or sniffed rose and musk perfumes to purify the air and keep infection away in their homes. Plague doctors would stuff their beaked masks with sweet-smelling substances, or carry small bouquets, to mask the stench of death.
45. One consequence of the persistent risk of death in the 14th-century plague was that some Europeans sought religious penance and others sought pleasure and amusement while they might. The Danse Macabre, or “Dance of Death” fused these contradictory reactions in an artistic genre depicting Death leading popes, emperors, kings, laborers and children to the grave. Death cared not for riches or rank, but would eventually get everyone, its message warned.
15 Most Controversial & Costly Blunders in History
46 Plague Dowries Created Florence’s Bank
With the Black Death wiping out the population of Florence, there were fewer eligible bachelors, which increased the competition for husbands and drove up the dowries demanded by the groom’s family. In 1425 the Republic of Florence created Monte delle doti, a public fund to help families meet these escalating costs. When a girl reached an average age of five, her father deposited money that earned a guaranteed annual interest rate of 11 to 12 percent over seven and a half or 15 years. After she married and consummated the union, her husband could claim the matured dowry.
47. The bacterium that caused the Black Death in medieval Europe still infects people today, but modern antibiotics cure most cases when doctors begin treatment quickly. Treatment has lowered the mortality rate to approximately 11 percent. Without immediate treatment, bubonic plague can kill up to 60 percent of patients and spread into the bloodstream or lungs. Only a few thousand cases occur worldwide each year, allowing health authorities to contain outbreaks before they become pandemics.
48. Italian banker and chronicler Giovanni Villani wrote the Nuova Cronica, tracing the history of Florence from biblical times through his own 14th-century era. In 1348, he began documenting the enormous loss of life caused by the Black Death. Villani wrote, “And this plague lasted till,” leaving a blank for the date when the outbreak ended, but he died from the disease before completing it. His brother Matteo and nephew Filippo continued the chronicle through 1364.
49. During the Black Death, some Europeans reportedly had sex in graveyards to “laugh in the face of death” and celebrate life while death surrounded them. The papal office responded by banning the practice and threatening anyone caught with excommunication. Because many people blamed the plague on sexual immorality, authorities also outlawed prostitution, adultery, and sodomy while imposing heavy fines.
50. Bialowieza Forest, now spanning Poland and Belarus, preserves part of the ancient woodland that once covered much of Europe. In 1426, Polish king Wladyslaw II Jagiello and Queen Sophia took refuge at a hunting manor there while plague spread through Polish and Lithuanian towns. The royal couple remained among the secluded woodlands and hunted while waiting for the epidemic to pass, although Jagiello broke his leg while pursuing a bear. Centuries of royal ownership, restricted hunting, and later conservation laws helped preserve it.
RE: Fact #18 (Plague Quarantena Created Modern Quarantine) – It actually goes a bit deeper. Italians use the suffixes “ina” or “ino” to indicate something is small, like calling a small apple a “melina”. It works for numbers, too. A “quarantina” basically implies “around 40” or “the low 40s.” So, ships were essentially being told to wait for a “quarantina”.
RE: Fact #20 (Mongol Catapults Launched Plague Corpses) – I read that they used napalm made from human fat. That is metal as hell.
The Mongols were pretty intense across the board. The strength needed to pull a Mongol bow was like lifting two grown men off the ground with just two fingers. They were sharp, too, they played into their enemies’ views of them as “barbarian hordes” to bait them into traps.
RE: Fact #19 (Cairo Endured Fifty Plague Epidemics) – Newton actually kicked off some of his biggest work in 1665-1666 while Cambridge was shut down because of the plague. The Great Fire of London is also often credited with helping kill off the rats and fleas that carried the disease, allowing the city to be rebuilt with better sanitation.
RE: Fact #16 (Plague Hag Pesta Swept Villages) – That is absolutely intense.
For instance: [“Mor, der kommer en kjerring”, 1900], which means “Mother, an old woman is coming this way.” I was surprised to find out Kittelsen lived from 27 April 1857 to 21 January 1914.
RE: Fact #18 (Plague Quarantena Created Modern Quarantine) – As a Mexican born in the US who speaks both Spanish and English, I’ll never see the number 40 the same way again.
RE: Fact #9 (Issyk-Kul Plague Graves Revealed Origins) – There is a really good book called The Great Mortality that covers the Black Death.
RE: Fact #1 (Plague Labor Shortage Raised Wages) – Something similar happened across the Western world after WWII. Between the loss of 30 million people and the massive task of rebuilding, the following 30 years turned out to be pretty great for workers.
RE: Fact #15 (Hittite Plague Weaponized Diseased Rams) – This really caught my eye. It feels like Nurgle is pulling the strings from behind a fake identity. Also, who was the God Emperor back then?
RE: Fact #28 (Plague Vow Sustained Oberammergau’s Theater) – It’s a very cute little town with great ice cream, only €1 a scoop! I’d recommend stopping by for an afternoon if you’re ever in the area.
I agree. My friends and I stopped there back in 1997 while heading back to Munich from Linderhof. It is just such a perfect little Bavarian town. Not much happens there, but it is incredibly quaint and picturesque.
RE: Fact #26 (Cat Killings Worsened Plague Spread) – Well, cats must have gotten their revenge because my main memory of Rome near the Vatican is that there are cats everywhere.
RE: Fact #22 (Plague Physician Prescribed Spiteful Bloodletting) – Meanwhile, another papal physician, Guy de Chauliac, managed to keep Pope Clement VI alive by surrounding him with a ring of fire 24/7. It seems to have worked, since Clement survived the worst of the plague and only passed away from a kidney abscess in 1352.
I think I found a weekend project. If I can get WiFi set up inside a ring of fire, I might never leave.
RE: Fact #30 (Plague Robes Blocked Infectious Fleas) – Plus, they used gloves and full face masks, neither of which were common for doctors until the 1880s.
RE: Fact #11 (Plague Vagrancy Laws Punished Idleness) – It is not just about fewer people, but fewer people in power. Social mobility only happens when there is room at the top. The ruling class always tries to protect their own children through corruption or rigging the system. The Black Death, much like the World Wars, was incredibly destructive to the elite, which created opportunities for others to climb the social ladder. It led to massive progress, though at the cost of millions of lives.
RE: Fact #21 (Newton’s Plague Retreat Produced Calculus) – If necessity is the mother of invention, then boredom is the father. Having free time is what allowed us to develop philosophy, art, math, and everything else that makes us more than just hunter-gatherers looking for our next meal.
Before smartphones, I actually came up with a new way to factor numbers during my bathroom breaks at work over the span of six months. Productivity has definitely gone downhill since then.
RE: Fact #25 (Plague Survivors Lived Longer Lives) – It isn’t about natural selection. Europe was overpopulated before the plague, and afterward, the population was small enough that food distribution improved and labor was in higher demand, which let the peasantry negotiate for better living conditions.
RE: Fact #8 (Plague Physicians Used Living Pigeons) – That is such a ridiculous and wrong approach. The real science should have been using mold, like what grows on old food.
you got me. It is actually possible that pigeon livers had some antibiotic properties, and those 14th-century doctors are looking at us like we are the crazy ones.
RE: Fact #17 (Plague Prosperity Triggered Sumptuary Laws) – If they didn’t force the lower classes to live differently, the elite wouldn’t stand out at all. Then the commoners might start getting dangerous ideas, like equality, or the thought that nobility is unnecessary. Can’t have that, right?
RE: Fact #11 (Plague Vagrancy Laws Punished Idleness) – If you were caught begging more than once instead of working, you were flogged or executed. Unemployment was essentially a capital crime. – Second offense for vagabondage meant repeat whipping and losing half an ear. Third offense meant execution as a criminal. – The 1547 Act turned the unemployed into slaves for their accusers. If you ran away, you were branded with an ‘S’, and three times meant execution. – By 1572, unlicensed beggars over fourteen were flogged and branded on the ear; repeat offenses for those over eighteen meant execution.
RE: Fact #20 (Mongol Catapults Launched Plague Corpses) – There is definitely a historical debate here, since the only account comes from a chronicler named Gabriele De’ Mussi who wasn’t even there. Some research suggests the claim is plausible but that the plague would have hit regardless, whether or not bodies were used in the siege.
RE: Fact #28 (Plague Vow Sustained Oberammergau’s Theater) – I guess if I were spared a horrific, slow death, I’d be okay with learning a few musical numbers too.
RE: Fact #15 (Hittite Plague Weaponized Diseased Rams) – Another instance of biological warfare was the 1340s plague outbreak. It likely arrived in the West via trading ships from Asia and exploded during the siege of Kaffa in Crimea, where they launched infected corpses over the city walls. Those ships then sailed for Italy, stopping at various ports and turning the entire continent into a massive plague zone, eventually wiping out nearly half of Europe. Biological warfare is just brutal.
And that ended up devastating the populations in the Americas, too. Everyone thought that guy who claimed to see cities in the Amazon was losing his mind, but he was right. The plague killed them off, and the jungle just reclaimed everything.
RE: Fact #9 (Issyk-Kul Plague Graves Revealed Origins) – The Mongols were basically experts at biological warfare, flinging plague-ridden corpses into cities they were besieging.
They were not immune, though. It actually helped kick-start the decline of the Mongol Empire.
RE: Fact #10 (Plague Brewing Shift Displaced Alewives) – It says women’s role in the medieval ale industry came from their traditional duties of brewing for their families. It really shows how far society has fallen that we do not consider ale food anymore!
RE: Fact #13 (Famine Weakened Europe Before Plague) – What did they do in the old days when crops were ruined to get seed for the next year? I imagine most of their seed was already in the ground. It makes me wonder how many crop lineages went extinct because of those disasters.
RE: Fact #31 (Plague Fleas Vomited Infectious Blood) – So the fleas are also victims along with the rats? That is one nasty bacteria.
RE: Fact #5 (Plague Depopulation Delayed Europe’s Recovery) – I can’t imagine living in cities during those times. Modern sanitation and medicine are a godsend.
RE: Fact #2 (Plague Labor Scarcity Crumbled Feudalism) – That is one common theory. Another is that professional armies proved far more effective than noble-led forces, which chipped away at the nobles’ power. Between the Crusades and the rise of Italian merchants, a wealthy urban economy emerged. As kings centralized power, they preferred taxing nobles to fund national armies or mercenaries rather than relying on the nobles to fight. Wealthy nobles eventually found it easier to just pay taxes. This decline in noble power and the concurrent loss of influence for the Catholic Church helped pave the way for Protestantism in Northern Europe. Feudalism likely crumbled due to a combination of factors, though the Black Death certainly sped things up. Interestingly, the plague probably reached Europe precisely because of those expanding Asian trade routes, ships carried rats, rats carried fleas, and fleas carried the plague. So, one could argue that trade itself set the whole chain reaction in motion.