Rats and Fleas

RATS + FLEAS 

SPREAD DIAGRAM 

BASIC BODY PARAGRAPH - 

 During the pandemic, ‘The black death’ over 2 thirds of the population were killed by the plague. But what spread the plague and where did it come from? This is where rats and fleas come in as they were how The Black Death became so deadly. There were multiple ways of catching the plague but the most common was catching it from direct contact with a person who is infected with the plague. But for that person to become ill in the first place, they would have caught it off of fleas, fleas would bite the rats suck out their blood which is carrying the plague then jump onto a human and barf it all up into the person’s bloodstream. Infected people would then spread the plague through trading ports and the plague soon spread all throughout Europe. It started when 12 ships from the Black Sea docked at the Sicilian port of Messina within 3 years there was no place safe from the black plague. If a plague like the black death were to come about nowadays it would be less infectious as we have better hygiene rather than people living in the 13th century. During the 13th-century people would throw their droppings onto the streets this attracted rats who loved the dirt and grime, this caused there to millions of rats making the plague spread like wildfire. The more rats, the more fleas, the more rats and fleas the more people got infected, the more people got infected the more it would spread and the more people would die from this tragic pandemic.