fits many names, The Black Death (Platt 101). To this day, thereis a popular nursery rhyme that arose from the plague. Ring around the rosy,Pocket full of poseys,Ashes, ashes,We all fall down."Ring around the rosy" refers to the rosary beads thatpeople used to pray to protect themselves from the disease. Thesmell of death was so strong, that people would carry flowers(poseys) in their pockets to help hide the stench. "Ashes,ashes" is a reference to the funeral pyres that were used toburn the infected bodies, and "we all fall down" is a directreference to all the deaths. There are two ways of transmitting the Black Plague. Aninfected flea from a rodent who in turn transmits the disease tohumans is one way. Another way is inhaling the germ that hasbeen coughed out by a human or animal plague victim (Gregg 109).The plague's death toll was one hundred thirty sevenmillion victims, and at its worst it killed two million people ayear. Traders from the Italian city of Genoa carried the plagueto their homeland and in the next few years it spread withalarming speed across Europe. In the first complete week ofJuly it claimed seven hundred twenty five lives; in the secondweek, one thousand eighty nine lives; the third week, onethousand eight hundred forty three victims; and two thousand tenlives were lost in the fourth week. The immediate impact of theBlack Death was the loss of one third to one half of thepopulation of Europe in about four years (Gregg 126).The decrease in population had a lasting effect on thecommercial lives of Europeans. Always the first casualty of every recession is the building industry, and the building inMedieval England would never again be as extravagant as it wasin the half century before the Black Plague. The loss of commonlaborers contributed to the chaos. It is said that the severelabor shortage that continued for over a century after theplague contributed largely to the loss of buildings. The Plaguen...
