In contrast to TB, which is seen as a refined disease, the plague is contracted in dirty, crowded cities and associated with filth, poverty, and sin. Because many people believed that the plague was punishment from God, people who contracted the disease were seen as damned. Ill persons were isolated from society and when they died, were buried in mass graves without a ceremony or mourning.
In the Plague Selections we recently read, physicians outline the symptoms and signs of the disease and discuss how the the plague affected society. When Bradley explains that "so in Animals it may be, that by ill Diet and the Habit of their Body, may be so altered, that their very Breath may entice those poisonous Insects to follow their way, 'till they can lodge themselves in the Stomach of the Animal, and thereby occasion Death." Does the diet of someone correlate to their likeliness to contract the plague? If so, how does that affect the class demographics if prices of food are being raised during this chaotic time?
The treatments mentioned in the second reading also seem to be more accessible by wealthy people. Where do we see this class distinctions in the Decameron and the Plague Readings? How do the treatments of the disease add to these distinctions? How does the disease shape social interactions and behaviors?
I think that someone's diet has a connection with their likeliness of contracting the plague, or any disease in general. Having a bad diet results in a person becoming less healthy, and eventually not being able to fight diseases as well as they should be, so there is definitely a correlation. In terms of the plague, I think it would have greatly affected the classes at the time. Since prices of food were being raised, generally only richer people would have been able to afford goods to keep them healthy. In turn, people who were poor at the time would either have to buy the cheapest food (which probably wasn't the healthiest) or beg for food that they couldn't afford. Maybe people saw that as a way of God rewarding the rich and wealthy? I don't really know.
ReplyDeleteIn terms of social interactions and behavior, the plague completely changed how people viewed each other. Like you said above, family members abandoned each other, prisoners were let out after guards left their posts, and people ran away from their duties and roles in society. In the Plague Selections I saw a lot in terms of class distinctions. For example a physician writes, "Meat was sold at 18-20 Sous per pound, and was only distributed to those that had Billets from the Consuls" (241). He explains how only a few people at the top who had access and the money to buy meat could have it. Everyone else left in the city was without food that was essential to keeping a good diet. He later goes on to say, "One thing very particular is, that Monsieur Monstier, one of the Consuls of the city, who had been continuously on horseback ordering the slaves who carried away the dead in carts, or those who were sick, to the hospitals, enjoys his health as well as he did the first day he began; the sickness seems at present to abate and we have the satisfaction to see several whom we took under our care at the beginning of the sickness, promise fair towards a recovery" (241). Here we can see the physician explain how one of the higher up people in the city is well and healthy due to their care. The people who were poor didn't have the opportunity to be treated, which resulted in them dying in their homes and on the streets. It shows how people who were of a higher class had a better chance of survival than the lower class.
I'd have to say that poor diet by itself doesn't necessarily make someone more susceptible to specifically the bubonic plague. In the most infamous form of the plague (the bubonic plague), all that is necessary for one to contract the plague is to be bitten by an infected oriental rat flea. Once this occurs, without antibiotics, the patient is almost sure to die - given that Yersinia Pestis can reproduce inside phagocytes (white blood cells that consume foreign bodies), the immune system cannot effectively compete with it on its own.
ReplyDeleteSepticemic plague can also occur alongside the bubonic plague, when lymph drains into the bloodstream, and Yersinia Pestis enters as well. Although the symptoms can be different from the bubonic plague, the method of infection is roughly the same.
Pneumonic plague is contracted after Yersinia Pestis invades the lungs, and can be contracted by inhaling aerosolized plague bacteria or after the plague spreads through the bloodstream to the lungs. Again, symptoms are similar to the bubonic plague because these are all the same disease, with different methods of contraction.
A commonality between all these methods of contraction is that they have nothing to really do with diet specifically. However, it could easily be argued that poor living conditions and proximity to infected clothing / corpses is tied with poverty and living conditions in the city, and that is tied with a poor diet. To answer Lucy's question, yes, there is probably a correlation. However, this isn't because of the diet of an infected individual - it's only due to their surroundings.
I'd say the wealthy had a distinct advantage when it came to surviving the plague - not necessarily because of their diet, but because of the surroundings they were in. If one lived in a villa, a good distance away from plague-infected objects, they had a much lower chance of contracting the disease, especially if none of their servants left or entered their home. This was the main factor in the relative success of the wealthy, I believe, instead of the 'treatments' available during that time.
Diet plays an important role in the general health of an individual. Pertaining to what you wrote, as a poor person living in the 1600's during the time of the plague, the food that was available to most was probably limited to just bread. Bread can sustain you, but will not provide you with the proper nutrients to maintain a healthy body. The body is a temple, right? Richer people would probably have access to more food and a wider array of food. Since the British empire had colonies all around the world, I would not be surprised to hear of a wealthy aristocrat eating foods from around the world. This leads into the idea that wealthy people were less likely to contract the disease. In the Decameron, the wealthy people of italy went out into the countryside, while their fellow Italians suffered.
ReplyDeleteContracting the plague at that time was basically a death sentence. In the Decameron, as I wrote before, the wealthy aristocrats simply left their city and ventured out into the countryside where the plague could not harm them, whereas the poorer residents of the city where left to die. The plague really brought out the division between the poor and the wealthy. On page 241 in the Plague Readings it says "the Town (Marseilles) was without bread, without wine, without meat, without Medicines, and in general, without any Succours" (241). This quote says a lot about treatment and conditions during the 1600's. How could one be treated if there was no medicine? Or food? or wine? The wealthy residents of Marseilles probably fled the city and with them the ability to stay alive. My main point is the plague most likely augmented the divide between the wealthy and the poor. After all, it was life or death.
Although diet certainly affects a person's general health and ability to combat disease, I think that contracting the plague was less directly correlated with one’s eating habits. While a less nutritious diet can increase risk for some diseases like heart disease and diabetes, the plague was caused by a bacterial infection and was highly contagious, so it could more easily affect people of varying socioeconomic classes.
ReplyDeleteThe plague reshaped accepted norms of social behavior in terms of how people coped with the disease, whether by indulging themselves, isolating themselves, abandoning family, punishing themselves, blaming each other, or seeking religious comfort. I do think that ability to avoid the plague was correlated with wealth, as wealthier people may have been able to afford not to work and to sequester themselves, while the poorer members of society had to continue working. Boccaccio explains in The Decameron that “the lower classes, and probably the middle classes for the most part too, presented an even more pitiful spectacle. Most of them, restricted to their own neighborhoods and their own homes by hope or by poverty, fell sick at the rate of thousands a day, and since they had no care or assistance, virtually all of them perished” (12). Despite the inequalities that existed in society, the plague was ironically somewhat of an equalizer in that men and women, people from many countries, the poor and the rich, the “virtuous" and the "sinful" were all affected by the plague.
A person’s diet affects their overall health, especially in regard to diseases where the immune system is integral. However, in the case with the plague, diet most likely did not matter as the disease was spread by fleas, which I doubt care about how a person eats. I definitely think that food prices would have affected the poor quite a bit and given them a hard time remaining healthy overall, causing an even greater detrimental effect in the instance that they did contract the plague. We see that places where “air within the streets was pent up, and had not a due freedom of passage”(242) were most commonly affected by the plague. These were places that large numbers of people inhabited, most likely along with the animals that carried the fleas and disease. Wealthier people tended to live further away from the thicket of people within cities or towns. In the Decameron the characters are all “nobly born” (Boccaccio 14) which meant that they probably survived the plague by not living in crowded áreas like people of the lower classes. The treatments for the disease were often more expensive than the average person could afford, which could involve moving away to a palace “on the top of [a] hill” (Boccaccio 19) or medicines prescribed by physicians. Since the plague affected more heavily populated, dirty áreas full of lower-class people, it became associated with uncleanliness and poverty, thus creating a bigger divide between the wealthy and the poor, though the plague did not generally discriminate when it came to killing people off.
ReplyDeleteWhen examining the plague through its influences on different social classes, I found that the plague's effects were rather oxymoronic: they simultaneously united and divided the wealthy and poor. The Black Death united multiple social classes mainly through its mortality rate: no one was exempt from the plague's clutches with rich, poor and middle-class people all rendered vulnerable to its symptoms. While the rich may have had several advantages to lower classes in this situation, everyone all over Europe, no matter their background or titles either suffered or lived in fear of the bubonic plague: "Indeed many of every opinion died everywhere" (Bocaccio 10). However, the plague also divided social classes. I found that the Decameron illustrated this divide through its description of how "the lower classes, and probably the middle classes for the most part too, presented an even more pitiful spectacle" (12). Wealthier families often had the resources to either escape plague-ridden areas or obtain better care or cleanliness. Those that were born into poorer families did not have such luxury. I feel that the ladies and men who tell the stories of the Decameron symbolize the advantages bestowed upon the wealthier people in this era. They were able to escape the plague by moving to an extraordinarily luxurious area and were even able to enjoy themselves through telling stories rather than living in fear of falling ill. Bocaccio describes the women as being "sensible people, nobly born, attractive in appearance, well-mannered and graceful" (14). While everyone in this era definitely suffered from the plague, it was undeniable that the rich were better equipped to handle it.
ReplyDeleteDiet definitely played and still continues to play a huge role in one's health. However, I don't think that the difference in the diet of the different classes within the plague-ridden societies caused a discernible difference. No matter the difference, the plague was able to reach nearly everyone. As Jadie points out, no one was really immune to the plague unless they had the means to leave or find better ways to take care of themselves.
ReplyDeleteOne’s diet definitely correlates to his or her health and likeliness to contract illness. There are many risks and complications of an unhealthy diet, and while not all illnesses are due to diet alone, it can certainly decrease or increase the possibility and severity of oncoming illnesses. With raised food prices, more and more people will find themselves unable to sustain their normal diets simply for affordability reasons. More and more people will be left with no option but to turn to fast-food meals, where preparation conditions and environment may not be as sanitary as more high-end restaurants or even groceries, exposing more people to health issues.
ReplyDeleteAlthough the plague struck both wealthy and poor people just as severely, the poor didn’t necessarily have the resources or money to battle it. At least the wealthy were able to flee the town in search of a better, less infectious place. However, the poor had nowhere to go, much less pay for treatments. The Decameron reading stated, “Most of them, restricted to their own neighborhoods and their own homes by hope or poverty, fell sick at the rate of thousands a day, and since they had no care or assistance, virtually all of them perished” (Boccaccio 12).
I do think that diet can play into one's overall health and the strength of their immune system even today. However, since the plague was spread by fleas and rodents I don't believe that the diet would necessarily effect the overall likelihood of one contracting the plague or not. I do believe that the quality of the food, rotten or fresh may have played a role, since rotten food is likely to have infected bugs in it or had infected bugs/animals touch it. For this reason, price of fresh food may have risen and therefore created a subtle divide between rich and poor.
ReplyDeleteI don't think that the plague really left much room for class distinctions. There weren't any "real" treatments during the time of the plague anyway, no one knew any answers and science and medicine were not highly developed at all. The only divide I could maybe think of would be between those who could afford to flee to the countryside and those who couldn't. The plague was a ruthless disease and killed pretty much anyone it set its jaws on.
I think that diet can help someone's overall health, however, I do not believe that diet alone would cure the patients infected with the plague.
ReplyDeleteWhen it comes to cures, specifically this type of cure. It shows how social class plays a huge role in treatment. Poor people could no afford to change their diet to try and cure themselves, unlike the wealthy who could freely decide where to go and what they want to eat. In general the wealthy had a greater chance of surviving because of their ability to miss work, leave the country, and change their diet. I think that the plague created a deeper deivde between the rich and poor, however as history shows the poor got more power after because of the demand for labor and the scarcity of poor people.