ht it was put upon them by the wrath of God getting them for their iniquities or sins. Even though they had absolutely no earthly idea where this disaster was coming from, they soon learned to recognize the symptoms.Blood from the nose was a manifest sign of inevitable death; but in men and women alike it first betrayed itself by the emergence of certain tumors in the groin or the armpits, some of which grew as large as a common apple, others as an egg, some more, some less, which the common folk called gavoccioli. From the two said parts of the body this deadly gavocciolo soon began to propagate and spread itself in all directions indifferently; after which the form of the malady began to change, black spots or livid making their appearance in many cases on the armor thigh or elsewhere, now few and large, then minute and numerous. And as the gavocciolo had and still were an infallible token of death. By the following August, this disease had spread as far as England. This is where people began to call this disease the Black Death, due to the black sores that was found over the entire body after contacting the disease.The Black Death is an acute, infectious, contagious disease that affects rodents and humans alike. It is caused by a short, thick, gram-negative bacillus, Yersina pestis. In humans, plague occurs in three different forms known as the bubonic plague, pneumonic plague, and septicemic plague. Bubonic plague is the most common form. The name derives from the appearance of buboes, or enlarged, inflamed lymph nodes in the groin or armpit or on the neck. Bubonic plague is transmitted by the bite of insects that are normally found on rodents, and that seek new hosts when the original host dies. The bubonic plague usually would slay a person within five days. Pneumonic plague gets the name because it infects the lung and is often transmitted by droplets sprayed from the lungs and mouth of infected persons; the infect...
