65 The Black Death

Imagine an illness so serious that people might go to bed well and be dead before morning. Think of this illness striking most of your family and friends. How would you respond? This question faced many Europeans in the 1300s as bubonic plague—the Black Death—swept the continent.

The plague rampaged across Europe beginning in late 1347. Its symptoms were terrible. In one form, sufferers developed egg-sized black swellings in their armpits and groins. These swellings were followed by boils and strange black blotches on their skin, the result of internal bleeding. In another form of the disease swellings didn’t develop, but people spit blood instead. In both forms, people contracted a severe fever, and they were dead within hours or days.

The plague was spread either by contact with blood or by respiratory infection. The respiratory infection meant that if a person coughed on you, you could get the disease. And if you got it, you most probably died. By the time the plague burned itself out in 1350, over twenty million Europeans had died from it. The city of Paris lost half of its population; Venice lost about two-thirds. Sufferers died so fast that there often wasn’t time to bury them, and bodies piled up in the streets. The plague was responsible for a decades-long shortage of people.

Today an outbreak of plague could be controlled with antibiotics, but no such cure existed 650 years ago. Many escaped the only way they could: by deserting sick friends and families. A few got to isolated areas where the plague had not hit, but most did not—and died anyway.

想象一种严重到人们可能睡前还安然无恙、清晨就离世的疾病。想象这种疾病侵袭了你大部分的家人与朋友，你会作何反应？14世纪时，腺鼠疫——也就是黑死病——席卷欧洲大陆，许多欧洲人都面临着这个问题。

1347年末起，黑死病在欧洲肆虐，其症状极为可怖。其中一种病症表现为，患者的腋窝与腹股沟处出现鸡蛋大小的黑色肿块，随后皮肤上会生出疖子与奇怪的黑斑，这是内出血的结果。另一种病症不会出现肿块，但患者会咳血。无论哪种病症，患者都会患上严重的高烧，几小时或几天内便会死亡。

黑死病通过血液接触或呼吸道感染传播。呼吸道感染意味着，若有人对着你咳嗽，你就可能染上这种病；而一旦染上，大概率会死亡。到1350年疫情自行消退时，已有超过2000万欧洲人死于黑死病。巴黎的人口减少了一半，威尼斯则减少了约三分之二。患者死亡速度极快，往往来不及安葬，尸体堆积在街道上。这场瘟疫造成了长达数十年的人口短缺。

如今，鼠疫的爆发可以用抗生素控制，但650年前并没有这样的疗法。许多人只能通过抛弃生病的亲友逃生，少数人逃到了未受瘟疫侵袭的偏远地区，但大多数人没能逃脱，最终还是死亡了。