Ring around the rosy, a pocket full
of posies, ashes, ashes, and we all fall down! That lovely little nursery rhyme
is actually about the bubonic plague! The ring around the rosy refers to the
dark ring symptom found under the armpit. The posies (flowers) in the pocket
were to cover the smell, and you can probably guess what we all fall down means! The Black Death was one of the deadliest bacteria
to come to Europe. It was known as the Black Death because victims of it appeared
black from the broken blood vessels under the skin. Its original arrival was
actually rather spooky. Twelve ships, apparently without a crew came into a European
port. When the ships were boarded, many dead or dying sailors were discovered
littering the deck. The harbormaster immediately ordered the ships towed back
out to sea and burned, but it was to late. The scourge that would eventually
destroy 1/3 of Europes population had arrived. The rats that escaped the ships
and got to shore had fleas. Fleas that in turn had bubonic plague. Bubonic plague was much more dangerous then than it is now because of modern antibiotics. It works like this: the bacteria enter the bloodstream after getting inside the body. Then, when white blood cells arrive to combat the plague, the sneaky things hijack
the cells and hitch a ride, straight to the lymph nodes. Then, the bacterium
takes over the immune system, turning the lymph nodes into plague sores (buboes) and eventually killing the host. Without modern medicine, there was very little chance of recovery.
There were
tons of really strange (and ineffective) means of stopping the plague. Amulets,
herbal remedies, quarantine, and leather straw filled masks came into play. People
would go so far as to board plague victims up in their own houses! Entire villages
got quarantined at a time. Eventually the plague died down, but it left Europe
eternally scarred.
