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Imagine yourself alone on a street corner, coughing up bloody mucous each time you exhale. You are gasping for a full breath of air, but realizing that is not possible, you give up your fight to stay alive. You're thinking, why is this happening to me? That is how the victims of the Black Death felt. The Black Death had many different effects on the people of the Middle Ages. To understand the severity of this tragic epidemic you must realize a few things about the plague. You should know what the Black Death is, the cause of the plague, the symptoms, the different effects it had on the people, and the preventions and cures for the plague. The Black Death, also known as the Black Plague or the Bubonic Plague, which struck in 1349, and again in 1361-62, ravaged all of Europe to the extent of bringing gruesome death to many people of the Middle Ages. Cantor says that the Black Death states that, "No one - peasant or aristocrat - was safe from the disease, and once it was contracted, a horrible and painful death was almost a certainty. The dead and the dying lay in the streets abandoned by frightened friends and relatives "(482). This certainly paints an accurate and horrifying picture of the fourteenth century during the plague. The Bubonic Plague was one of the major scourges of the Middle Ages. It killed indiscriminately without remorse or thought of consequences. Because the plague was so widespread, theories about causes, blame and a variety of supposed cures abounded. Most of these were without basis or fact and relied on myths and rumors. Theories for the cause of the disease came from ignorance and hate, two horrible things married by fear.
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