Both black and red plagues were caused by infected fleas that came out of Asia on the skin of rats on ships. The infected rats would die, but the fleas didn't and carried themselves off to other hosts. The fleas could live without a host for a rather extraordinary length of time. Due to general uncleanliness of people during the time, fleas were everywhere along with rats and other various rodents that helped to carry them around.
In the middle ages, even lords and ladies lived in filth. Nothing was yet known about a clean environment harboring germs or viruses... they believed that illness was caused by the devil, witchcraft, bad "vapors" in the air. Essentially, Europe forgot all the practical medicine brought from the Romans and the Middle East. The Church considered it a heresy and witchcraft to dabble in the healing arts and believed that all bad things, illness included, was due to the Devil, thus the only way to get sick or get rid of it was because you did something displeasing to God and had to pray, and most especially donate to the Church. Corrupt, clever jerks the Roman Church was from the Pope to most local Bishops.
Even in castles rushes were strewn on the floor because pets and people alike used any space as a toilet. They didn't believe in bathing and thought warm/hot water caused bad "vapors" to get into the skin and make you ill. They used filthy river water that was also used for slops, sewer, garbage and all other gross infectious things. Only out in small villages were local streams relatively clean. People tossed their body sewage and other garbage out their windows onto the street. People didn't normally wash themselves, their environment or use clean dishes... forks weren't even invented, and everyone carried their own personal eating knife that also wasn't cleaned. Lords and ladies would cover their hair with hats, veils and other various ornamental hoods because they didn't wash it and to keep fleas from hopping out. Though cleaning one's hands and face were fairly common (though with filthy river water) only usually on special occasions or once every few months would use a rag dipped in a basin of river water to wipe themselves "clean" and while never undressing (that would be a sin) though they didn't wash all over.
Peasants in small villages might have been generally more clean by scrubbing themselves in a stream and scrubbing their one set of garments in a private area trying to be less sinful as possible by stripping most or all of the way and immediately putting back on their wet clothing that was warn until it dried naturally (again to be less sinful). Soap no one knew about though some people would use fragrant flowers to mix in the water they cleaned with if they were available. In cold weather no peasant washed or washed their clothing. Even the middle class merchants that had their own small houses used the bottom floor to keep their animals such as the milk cow, the horse, the goat, the dogs, etc. while the family lived in one room upstairs or only the head of the house did while the rest of the family slept with the animals.
Back to Ebola...
It came out of Central Africa mostly from fruit bats that various mammals ate and became infected. People then killed these mammals and ate them becoming infected themselves. Until this current outbreak all other Ebola outbreaks were very small because they happened in tiny villages far from others. Though it may have killed most or all of the people in an infected village, it didn't travel anywhere else or only to one other small village, and thus died out. I think the greatest outbreak before this one was something like two dozen people.
This outbreak happened to occur in West Africa in an area where Liberia, Sierre Leone and Guinea all share open borders, so infected people traveled easily in and out of those countries taking the virus with them and infecting others. Nigeria had a small outbreak because one jerk of a diplomat broke out of an Ebola ward and flew in his private small plane back to his spread in Nigeria infecting something like nine other people. These three countries - Liberia, Sierre Leone and Guinea - are packed with slums full of people though there are small villages as well, but they're normally not so far from other similar villages. Thus for the first time giving Ebola a chance to infect scads of people. Worse, all three countries are war torn, the poorest of the poor countries of the world with abysmal corrupt governments and horrid health care.
The clinics and hospitals are generally disgraceful, not much better or better staffed or equipped than a shack. Though Monrovia, a large city in Liberia, has the JFK hospital, it's either one of the only or the only hospital that's anything close to what first world countries like us have. Doctors Without Borders and other groups have been working in these poor countries for decades already because of their desperate medical treatment facilities for things like Malaria, HIV, or just general medical care. They don't have the facilities, medicine, vaccinations, supplies, training, etc. because their governments are shit, and other first world countries need to step in and help treat as well as provide.
Symptoms of Ebola generally start with a fever, muscle aches and extreme fatigue quickly followed by stomach pains, diarrhea and vomiting. Most people seem to die from the extreme dehydration though others may rally at this point and survive though it still kills 70% of people. There are those patients that somehow continue to survive while the virus still rages causing internal bleeding usually seen as bleeding from the mouth, nose, etc. Though some people this internal bleeding can cause skin eruptions from where blood and other fluid may escape, but it's not the same as the boboes that form from the black plague nor is it the same virus. The boboes from the black plague occur from infected lymph nodes that swell causing small to large skin eruptions dark in color in those areas. They can spread to other areas if the person infected lives long enough. These boboes are filled with blood and pus, and can burst open causing a very overpowering foul odor and draining copious amounts of infected material. Most people tended to die before that happened from the extreme pain of the boboes and the very high fever.
But even the black plague had a better record of survival with some people just somehow being able to fight the disease off with their own anti-bodies. Then the boboes shrink and fade until they're gone and the person's fever comes down, and they survive. The red plague apparently killed everyone infected. Though it was apparently less painful than having the boboes from the black plague, most people weren't even aware they had it until they started suddenly coughing up blood. Apparently, it also killed much faster... one day you'd be fine, that night you started coughing up blood, and by morning you were dead.
Believe it or not, we still have the plague. Though it never became a major outbreak like the one that occurred in Europe in the mid-14th century, there were still very small pockets of the disease that occurred from time to time and still individuals manage to get it. Eventually, modern medicine learned to cure it though even now some people still get it, but it's not the incurable disaster of old anymore.
The one disease that also was devastating during the medieval period was what is still known as The Sweat, The Sweating Sickness or The English Sweat though other places in Europe were also affected. It first appeared during the reign of King Henry VII in the later 15th century. Even more deathly than the plague of either variety or any other illness known before, The Sweat tended to kill most everyone within a matter of hours of infection. For some reason it didn't affect babies and young children.
Symptoms were a very high fever that caused copious sweating, hence the name. It would begin with a sense of being cold with chills that lasted from a half hour to 3 hours often accompanied by body aches particularly in the neck area and exhaustion. Without warning this period was followed immediately by intense sweating without warning, extreme exhaustion, palpitations and some people felt a pain or ache in the heart area. There was also an intense desire to sleep which usually most people never woke from, thus the determination of not allowing infected people to fall asleep. The virus offered no immunity from having suffered it and survived. Many people became infected several times with each outbreak never guaranteed that the suffering would be easier or not result in death each time... each time they got it, it was as if the body never new of it before. From the first symptoms to survival or death usually occurred within hours. Even lingering cases the illness didn't seem to last more than 24 hours.
The worst of the outbreaks occurred during King Henry the VIII's reign during something like 1528 or '29 (in any case, at the time he had already tossed off his first wife and was with his second, Anne Boleyn). This time it was far more devastating and widespread throughout Europe killing half of the populations. King Henry VIII, always squeamish about any illness, left London traveling from castle to castle in the country until it burned out. His first wife, Catherine of Aragon, is said to have survived an earlier outbreak, and during this worst of outbreaks, Anne Boleyn became infected and survived though it is thought she did because she became infected during the waining of the outbreak and never became so deathly ill. Survivors tended to be those that became infected as an outbreak wained having much intense symptoms though they lasted longer.
The last major outbreak occurred in the mid-16th century only a few decades later. Since this outbreak it has never appeared again, thus why we don't know what it was. There has never been any other illness with the same symptoms, so it remains a mystery of what it was, how it came to England and spread to Europe or why it has never occurred again. Creepy, eh?
I've always had a fascination with the medieval period - how people lived whether a peasant or lord/lady, how the Church was such a huge part of daily life, their clothing, their government, etc., etc., etc. It's endlessly fascinating, and I'll never ever get tired of it.
= new reply since forum marked as read
