Medicine Through TimeTopic Summary
Topic Summary: The Black Death 1348-1350
Part of The Black Death — GCSE History
This topic summary covers Topic Summary: The Black Death 1348-1350 within The Black Death for GCSE History. Revise The Black Death in Medicine Through Time for GCSE History with 8 exam-style questions and 5 flashcards. This topic appears regularly enough that it should still be part of a steady revision cycle. It is section 14 of 14 in this topic. Use this topic summary to connect the idea to the wider topic before moving on to questions and flashcards.
Topic position
Section 14 of 14
Practice
8 questions
Recall
5 flashcards
Topic Summary: The Black Death 1348-1350
Key Terms
- Black Death: Epidemic 1348-50 killing 30-50% of England; caused by Yersinia pestis bacterium
- Buboes: Black swellings in lymph nodes — symptom of bubonic plague
- Miasma: Bad air — the main medieval explanation for plague
- Flagellants: People who whipped themselves publicly to appease God's punishment
- Quarantine: Isolation of the sick — the one medieval measure that genuinely helped
- Theriac: Expensive mixture of up to 70 ingredients used as a supposed plague remedy
Key Dates
- 1345: Conjunction of Saturn, Jupiter, Mars — blamed by astrologers
- 1347: Plague reaches Sicily on Genoese ships
- 1348: Black Death arrives in England (Weymouth)
- 1350: First wave subsides — but returns in 1361, 1369, 1374...
- 1381: Peasants' Revolt — partly caused by labour shortages from Black Death
- 1665: Last major outbreak — the Great Plague of London
Key People / Groups
- Flagellants: Whipped themselves in public — actually spread disease by travelling
- Milan (city): Quarantined infected houses immediately — had lower death rates
- Doctors: Used bleeding, purging, theriac — all based on wrong theories, all ineffective
- The Church: Encouraged prayer and pilgrimage — spread disease through gatherings
Must-Know Facts
- Real cause: Yersinia pestis bacterium carried by fleas on rats — unknown to medieval people
- 30-50% of England's population killed — approximately 2 million people
- 1/3 of Europe's population died (25-50 million people)
- Three medieval explanations: God, miasma, humour imbalance — ALL wrong
- Only effective response: quarantine (right action, wrong reason)
- Black Death did NOT immediately change medicine — same theories persisted for 200 more years
- GMPQ: God, Miasma, Purge/bleed, Quarantine — four medieval responses
Cross-Topic Links
- → Topic 33 (Medieval Ideas): The Black Death showed medieval medicine — humours, miasma, prayer — had no answers; it is the defining test of medieval medical theory's limits.
- → Topic 38 (Great Plague 1665): Compare the two outbreaks: 1665 London used the same wrong theories but added organised quarantine and Bills of Mortality, showing how government response improved even without new medical understanding.
- → Topic 35 (Church Role): The Church encouraged prayer and pilgrimage during the Black Death — responses that spread the plague rather than containing it, showing how Church authority could harm public health.
- → Topic 40 (Germ Theory): The real cause of the Black Death — Yersinia pestis bacterium — was only discovered after Pasteur and Koch's work in the 1860s–1880s, 500 years after the outbreak.
- → Topic 42 (Public Health): The Black Death's devastation ultimately contributed to pressure for better sanitation — it connects to the long chain leading to 19th-century public health reform.