Topic Summaries

The Black Death (1346–1353)

GCSE > History > Edexcel > GCSE History: Medicine and Health in Britain (1000-Present) Topic Summaries > Medieval medicine > The Black Death (1346–1353)
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Summary table
  • The Black Death was an outbreak of the bubonic (swollen lymph nodes) and pneumonic (affecting the lungs and breathing) plague.
  • It killed about one-third to one-half of the British population after arriving in Weymouth.
  • Victims often died within three to four days.
  • It was spread by fleas and infected droplets, and the main symptoms were pus-filled buboes.Since no one could cure the plague, treatments often focused on dealing with buboes.
Beliefs about causes Prevention methods Treatments Consequences
  • Punishment from God for mankind’s sins
  • Extreme imbalance of the four humours
  • Astrology: unusual positions of Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn
  • Miasma: bad air from decaying rubbish or poisonous gases from volcanoes
  • Outsiders: strangers or witches blamed for causing disease; Jewish people blamed for poisoning wells
  • Prayer, fasting, and pilgrimages
  • Flagellants whipped themselves to ask for God’s forgiveness
  • Lighting fires and carrying sweet herbs and spices to clean the air
  • Quarantine: houses with sick people were shut for 40 days (largely ineffective as local authorities had limited power)
  • Prayer, confessing sins (or accepting the plague as God’s will)
  • Bloodletting
  • Purging
  • Some physicians advised plucking a chicken and holding its skin on the buboes (believing that skin was permeable so the miasma would be transferred from the patient to the chicken)
  • Food shortages: lords pivoted from crops to sheep farming as it required fewer workers, causing inflation of basic foods like bread.
  • Peasant wages: some peasants who survived believed they were divinely protected and demanded higher wages.
  • Religious changes: many priests died from the plague, and those who deserted were criticised for their cowardice. This meant the church suffered a loss of reputation as well as a loss of clergy.
  • Prejudices: due to misunderstandings about where the Black Death came from, there was widespread persecution of foreigners, beggars, and lepers.

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