Deep Dive Into Prior Pandemics: Part 3, the Black Plague in 1347-1351
How a Pandemic Caused Economic, Political, Social, and Religious Upheaval in France The Black Death reached Italy's shores at the Messina port in October 1347. The Genoese ship had stopped previously in a port on the Black Sea. They offloaded trade goods and a devastating infection. The diseased sailors showed strange black swellings about the size of an egg or an apple in the armpits and groin. The swellings oozed blood and pus and were followed by spreading boils and black blotches on the skin from internal bleeding. The sick suffered sever pain and died quickly within five days of the first symptoms. As the disease spread, other symptoms of continuous fever and spitting of blood appeared instead of the swellings or buboes. These victims coughed ans sweated heavily and died even more quickly, within three days or less, sometimes in 24 hours. In both types everything that issued from the body -- breath, sweat, blood from the buboes and lungs, bloody urine, and blood=bl