What is the most likely identification of the "plague" that devastated Eurasia in the fourteenth century? Explain the nature of the available evidence and how that evidence was used to reach the most convincing conclusion

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

A. Identification of the fourteenth century "plague"
1. pathology of the Black Death
a. diseases now known to medical science, bubonic plague, not
quite of the variety we know today played a part
b. bubonic plague is rat-borne
c. symptoms included swellings, jitters, vomiting, dizziness, and
pain might follow, often accompanied by inability to tolerate light
d. difficulty associating all deaths with only one disease
1. differing and multiple symptoms
2. outbreaks of typhus, smallpox, various kinds of
influenza, and hemorrhagic fevers coincided with some
visitations of plague
e. no seasonal pattern to outbreaks
1. points to the involvement of more than one pathogen
f. affected both humans and animals
g. remarkably indifferent to weather, striking at different seasons
and in climatically different regions of Eurasia
1. plagues were less penetrative in hot, moist regions
2. newly evolved arrivals in the microbial world, it seems,
adapted to cooler environments and remained active for
as long as global cooling lasted
B. Use of evidence
1. DNA evidence
2. fourteenth-century sources describe symptoms associated with the
bubonic plague
3. using other surviving descriptions there were other diseases at work
4. no evidence of seasonal patterns also confirm the evidence of more
than one pathogen
5. routes of disease are easier to describe because there are multiple sources
that confirm it