The Black Death

I am currently enrolled in another history class at the university called "History of Medicine and Health". The past two weeks or so we have been talking about the plague that destroyed approximately half of the European and Central Asian populations and is today known as the Black Death. I have taken an interest in the subject and have chosen a book on which to write my critical book review called "The Black Death: The Great Mortality of 1348-1350". My interest lies mostly in the transmission and symptoms of the disease, but I just read the chapter about religious mentalities during this time and was surprised to learn how different religions viewed the plague.

In doing more research I found a page dealing with how the Black Death was received by the Islamic world during the mid-14th century outbreak that also touches on the response from the Christian world.

Christians viewed the disease as a punishment from God for, not only the sins that they had committed, but also for original sin, or the sin that one is born into. The Muslims could agree to the fact that the plague was a punishment, but only for those who had a lack of faith. They recognized that good people were also being affected by the disease. To explain this they determined that the plague was a gift from God to those who were faithful so that they could die as martyrs. Both religions believed that the plague was sent to each individual that was infected directly from God. They did not understand for some time that human contact played a huge role in the circulation of the disease.

As we know today, the plague did not choose its victims based on a person's character or beliefs. Today we understand the concepts of germs and disease transmission, but my challenge to you is this: try to imagine a world in which we could not understand. How much larger of an epidemic would swine flu be right now if we did not even know how it was transferred from person to person?