The Power of Plagues. Irwin W. Sherman

Fig. 4.4), and who cared for the sick, died at higher rates than did the other medical practitioners. Because of this, their role in curing disease was little valued. Indeed, the stench of death was so great during the plague years that to “purify” the air, the perfume Eau de Cologne was invented in Germany and named after the city of Cologne. Today, the perfume is known as “4711,” the address of the household where it was first made. New prestige fell to the barbers, and bloodletting and surgery (Fig. 4.5) became an integral part of their practice rather than barbering alone. This also led to an emphasis on studies of human anatomy in health and disease, and the Galenic system, which had no clear theory of contagion, declined in importance. Slowly, very slowly, change occurred both in the thought and in the practice of medicine, and it was the Black Death that instigated that change.

      One of the first physicians to advance a theory of contagion was Giovanni Fracastoro (1483-1533), in his book On Contagion and Contagious Diseases. Infectious disease, Fracastoro wrote, could be transmitted by semenaria (“germs”) in three ways: by direct contact, through carriers such as dirty linen, and through airborne transmission. His theory was put into practice when as physician to Pope Paul III he recommended the transfer of the Council of Trent from Trent to Bologna as a response to plague. Other physicians, however, did not subscribe to Fracastoro’s theory, and soon the practices were displaced by misguided suggestions until they were revived in the 19th century by Louis Pasteur, Robert Koch, and their associates.

Figure 4.4 Dr. Pestis, the plague doctor in costume, Courtesy Wikipedia.com

Figure 4.5 A barber-surgeon lancing a bubo. Woodcut

      Education

      As the death toll from the plague increased, the numbers of learned individuals decreased. This affected the universities, where lawyers, physicians, and clerics were trained. As the numbers of university students declined, so too did the number of universities. Before 1348 all of Europe had 30 universities, but by the time the plague ended 5 of these had been wiped out completely. The institution of cordons sanitaires as well as other restrictions on travel prevented students from enrolling at distant universities, and so local universities were established. Cambridge University in England acquired four new colleges, each founded by a bequest of a rich and pious patron, and all benefiting poor local scholars and clerics. Similarly, new universities were established throughout Europe in cities such as Vienna, Prague, and Heidelberg, so that it no longer became necessary to travel to Bologna or Paris for an education. This not only diminished the dominance of certain centers of learning but also led to curricular reform, and instruction began to be carried out in the vernacular tongue.

      Economy and Social Order

      The immediate effect of the Black Death was paralysis. Trade ceased. The economic effect of the Black Death was inflation and a sharp rise in the cost of food. The Hundred Years’ War between England and France was halted by a truce in 1349 because of the lack of able-bodied men. In depopulated Europe, even soldiers received higher wages. Another innovation to compensate for depopulated armies was the development of improved firearms; fewer soldiers, but with better and more-destructive weapons, could then successfully engage the enemy in battle.

The nature of farming was altered, too. In medieval times, farming involved serfs working the lands of their lords. The serfs and their families occupied a small village consisting of several small, whitewashed, two-room huts made of reeds and clay-like sod with a thatched roof. In one room lived the family, and in the neighboring room lived their animals. The floor was dirt, and it might be covered with leaves or rushes, and in the center were flat stones on which the fire was placed. There was no chimney or windows, and the smoke of the fire escaped through a hole in the roof or through the open door. Furniture, such as it was, consisted of a table, a few stools, a storage chest, and wooden pallets that served as beds. Adjacent to each hut was a half acre of land used by the serf and his family for the garden, chicken coop, and pigpen; the nearby stream had ducks and geese. Manure and night soil (human feces) were used as fertilizer, and plow animals such as horses or oxen were shared among several villages.

      Medieval villages were organized around large fields that were used for growing grains such as wheat or barley or oats. The land was cultivated by the serf and his family but owned by the lord of the land (landlord), who usually lived in a large, fortified manor house. The serfs labored for the landlord, and their duties were mostly unspecified and subject to the whims of the landlord. The landlord also had almost complete legal power over these poor and illiterate peasants. This feudal system of serfs and landlords declined coincident with the substitution of money for manual services. In effect, salary began to replace labor duties, and rents were paid to the landlord. Since during the Black Death so many peasants died, if the lord wanted to farm his land, he had to either obtain more laborers (usually at a dearer cost) or rent out his land to the survivors from neighboring villages or from the now-deserted towns. The nobility, in league with the landlords, tried to enforce service without payment of the laborers, and over time this engendered great hostility among them as their numbers continued to decline due to disease. In England, when the crown instituted a series of poll taxes in 1381, there was an uprising (called the Peasants’ Revolt). The revolt failed and repressive measures were instituted, but in the end the landlords had to capitulate because they recognized that without a labor force they would receive no income from the land. The landlords devised another scheme: they would continue to own the land, but now estate managers or stewards were hired to manage the fields and collect the rents. The stewards now lived in a grand house, and the rent-paying peasants now were tenant farmers on the lord’s land. But as disease and death continued to deplete the available labor pool, the tenant farmers had to recruit and pay other peasants or landless city folk. In this way, as the landlord’s fields came to be worked by non-landowning and rent-paying tenant farmers, the feudal system slowly began to change in character. To compensate for their loss in income (due to higher wages), the landlords continued to acquire more and more land and the tenant farmers in turn began to use less labor-intensive farming practices. This they could accomplish by the invention of the moldboard plow and through the conversion of farmland into pastureland. In England, in particular, pasturelands were devoted to sheep farming, which became so profitable that in some regions growing of crops was completely replaced by the raising of sheep for wool.

Mills that once were used for grinding wheat and barley could now be diverted to the spinning of cloth, operating of the bellows of furnaces, and sawing of wood. In England sheep husbandry exceeded all other crops and wool became the basis of prosperity. But the tenant farmers were continually besieged by ever-increasing rents, as well as by taxes imposed by the crown on the landowning lords. This is immortalized in the nursery rhyme “Baa Baa Black Sheep”:

      Baa baa black sheep, have you any wool?

      Yes, merry, have I, three bags full:

      One for my master, one for my dame,

      And one for the little boy that lives in the lane.

      The hardworking peasant had to give one-third of his income to the king, his “master,” and another third to the landlord (his “dame”); he was left with only one-third for himself (“the little boy”).

      The tenant farmers who had raised sheep for wool became richer and more powerful than their predecessors. By taking advantage of the anarchy caused by the land-grabbing and warring aristocracy (culminating in the Wars of the Roses, 1455-1485), the sheep raisers were able to buy up larger and larger parcels of land from the estates