How did people survive the Black Death?

The disease often referred to as the “Black Death” or more simply as “the plague”, was a disease caused by the Yersinia pestis bacterium which was carried by fleas. The disease would live within the fleas but not affect them in the same way it did humans, giving them plenty of time to spread it around before they died. It first appeared in Europe in the year 1347 when it made an immediate impact on the population. The disease is thought to have originated in either India or the western regions of the Middle East, but records on its effects in these areas are very rare indeed.

The plague spread so quickly because Europe wasn’t exactly as “clean” as it is today and rats were present anywhere people were. The infected fleas would live on the rats and move around from place to place, infecting food sources and jumping off to bite people, and since the disease didn’t affect the rats themselves they could be used as carriers for any infected flea that wished to jump onboard.

Between 1347 and 1351 the Black Death killed between 75 and 200 million people, but whatever the exact number is, it was about 50% of the population of the continent. So how did people survive the black death? well you only had three options, none of which were likely to work and some would even do you more harm than good.

Option 1 – Hide

The plague was carried by rats who don’t like to swim unless they have to, and certainly won’t try and swim to a distant island. The best option you would have to survive the plague would be to simply avoid it, though this would be close to impossible during the 12th century.

The problem with living on an island for 5 years would be trying not to starve to death. Even things like fishing would have been done with the simplest equipment and farm yields were low, to say the least. Going for that amount of time without running into something like a crop disease or a stray ship landing on your shore would be near impossible.

Option 2 – Cure it

They didn’t have what we know today as medicine back in the 12th century, but more experimental mixtures they believed would work. The well-recognized plague doctor would visit infected people and try to administer all kinds of strange remedies for the disease, none of which actually worked. Here are a few of the things the plague doctors would normally try on their patients.

Urine soak
It was known by this age that fresh urine has certain anti-bacterial properties, and peeing on a cut or small open wound would mean it was less likely to get infected. This was kept in mind by the plague doctors who used urine to rub onto the boils and rashes on the skin, and even soak people in a bath of urine donated by generous people who needed a wiz.

Mud and Poo rub

As unhygienic as it may be, if you have an open wound and mash a handful of mud into it, then it would stop bleeding. Also, people would use various mixtures of mashed-up plants to help wounds heal, and it must be this train of thought that led someone to think of using a mud and poo mixture to smother the boils, though why they thought poo would be a good idea is anyone’s guess. Since the plague only took around 10 days to kill someone, the infections they would have received from rubbing poo into an open sore wouldn’t have been able to fully develop in time before they died.

Plant medicines

Garlic was heavily used in a mashed form to rub over sores, followed closely by onions and then a wide variety of various herbs and other things that wouldn’t help in the slightest. People believed that various plants had medicinal properties, and rightly so, but the actual medicinal values of such plants were nowhere near what people believed them to be. At best a plague doctor would be able to give you a slight vitamin boost before you died.

Option 3 – Make Yourself Immune

During the 12th century, people would get sick very often, and it didn’t take long for people to notice that getting sick with something one time would mean you were less likely to suffer from it as badly or even at all the next time it came around. The idea was to infect yourself with just a little bit of the disease so that your body could fight it off and protect you from dying from it should you encounter it again. The idea was indeed reasonable, but the methods they used to do it weren’t exactly pleasant.

You had two choices to infect yourself with the disease, which were infected pus or snorting. A small cut would be made in someone’s arm and then a little bit of pus taken from an infected boil would be rubbed into it. The snorting method would involve taking a few scabs from an infected person’s wounds and grinding them up into a powder before snorting it up your nose. Even though the idea was good in theory, when this happens in modern times the disease in question is refined and mixed with other substances to make it safe, whereas rubbing or snorting a piece of diseased wound would simply just spread it around faster.

In reality, the chance of surviving the Black Death was purely down to luck, with you having a 50% chance of dying no matter where you lived on the continent. Today the disease has only popped up a couple of times and has been treated with modern medicine very successfully. Today the plague is believed to have been wiped out naturally and only exists in the very secure laboratories of a handful of governments.