While viewing the documentary and clip, I, personally, had quite a few questions and curiosities about how people dealt with such a devastating amount of sickness and death. I wondered what it would be like to live day to day wondering whether or not I would be next, fearing who I might lose among my family and friends, and what that fear would do to my sense of self? My faith? My will to go on? What caused some people to stay and help and others to flee? What would happen if this occurred today? These questions then led me to a slew of philosophical questions.
So what I wonder is...what questions arose as you viewed the videos? What did you wonder? What intrigued you? What filled you with fear? What did you think in general?
Take a few moments to thoughtfully reflect and respond below. (*As a reminder, please remember to proofread and edit before you submit.)
I did have a few questions about the plague. How did the plague stop spreading without a cure? Was Europe cut off from the rest of the world to prevent spread of the plague? Why did the disease never become as bad as it was ever again? I was supprised at how violent it made the people seem during the plague. In general I thought the videos were interesting because of all of the adaptations that the Europeans made to the plague.
ReplyDeleteI didn't have many questions but one question that I had initally thought about if there was not a cure for the plague then how exactly did the plague stop spreading? Overall I thought that certain parts of the videos were intereseting as some parts were not.
ReplyDeleteMy main question was how did the disease stop so suddenly? I also thought it was interesting that when they couldn't find the answer to curing the disease medically, they turned to religion. This surprised me simply because in today's society that is not the next thing we would turn to after failing to find the answer in science. I also wondered if the disease that spread was something as simple as the flu but they simply did not have the medical knowledge to cure it. I also wondered what it would be like to be one of the survivors right after the plague had waned. The last thing I though about was the people's reaction. I wondered if some people began to give in and since they gave up, it caused the plague to overtake the population quicker.
ReplyDeleteI think it's true that we turn to science first in modern society, but I wonder if that would change if a plague occurred that was incurable--or that spread more quickly than the time it would take to find a cure. If science couldn't save us, would people turn to their god?
DeleteI was first off, quite surprised that although your friends and family may be sick, they just left them. They didn't stay and help, they didn't want any reason to be around them. If I were put in that situation wouldn't you want to at least try and help your family stay alive? I also wandered how any of them survived? I know it was very little, but what did it take for them to last? I also was curious why they again blame the Jews? Had they done something wrong previously? Would we be able to survive a plague like this today? If our medicine up to par? Would people act the same way they did back then?
ReplyDeleteWhile I watched the video, I thought about how it might be if we had the Black Plague today. Would our hospitals be able to handle all the sick people? Would the doctors be able to find a cure quick enough? I found it intriguing that the video said that the people of Europe got used to the Black Death. To me it seems learning to live in a world consumed with disease would be impossible. I don't think I could just go on with my daily life while everyone around me was dying in agony. It scared me when I thought of the possibility of plague today. I know we've come a long way in medicine and technology, but would scientists be able to act quickly enough? To me that's what's scary.
ReplyDeleteI also found it was interesting that once the plague was over, peasants were demanding higher wages and they got them. What was interesting to me though, was that the government later said they had to go back to their old wages. I know overall life was better for the peasants, but if I was a peasant I would not have been happy when they made me go back to old wages.
What I find interesting about you comment is that we are surrounded by disease--so many people get cancer and still die from it. But I wonder if we don't panic and become overwhelmed because we can prolong the lives of cancer patients--and sometimes can put the cancer in remission?
DeleteWhile I watched the video, I thought about how it might be if we had the Black Plague today. Would our hospitals be able to handle all the sick people? Would the doctors be able to find a cure quick enough? I found it intriguing that the video said that the people of Europe got used to the Black Death. To me it seems learning to live in a world consumed with disease would be impossible. I don't think I could just go on with my daily life while everyone around me was dying in agony. It scared me when I thought of the possibility of plague today. I know we've come a long way in medicine and technology, but would scientists be able to act quickly enough? To me that's what's scary.
ReplyDeleteI also found it was interesting that once the plague was over, peasants were demanding higher wages and they got them. What was interesting to me though, was that the government later said they had to go back to their old wages. I know overall life was better for the peasants, but if I was a peasant I would not have been happy when they made me go back to old wages.
I had a few questions. How did the plague just stop spreading without killing off the entire population if there was no cure or remedies? Why would a parent abandon their child if they were sick? I also would like to know what the people who survived did after the plague had ran its course. I also wondered what would happen today if there was an epidemic outbreak. Who and how would we survive?
ReplyDeleteWhile watching this documentary I kept thinking of how terrifying it would be to live through this sort of catostrophy. One of the most concerning parts for me was how everyone was turning against religion. Religion was such a large aspect of life that the fact that people did not even find comfort in God is really socking. I feel like religion today is very weak in many aspects because there are so many challenges that people have to over come that they do not think that God can handel. I wonder if religion would survive if another sickness broke out?
ReplyDeleteThere were a few questions that were going through my mind as I was watching. I kept thinking that if there was a black plague today would people survive it? Would we have the risillancy to overcome such horrific situaitons? In some ways I feel like we would with our capability to find cures for illnesses today. I also keep wondering if every time period has their own example of the black death. I feel like there is something in every culture that greatly effects the generations to come. For example I feel like technology is very much an epidemic today. Although it does not have all of the negitive reprocussions, it does effect daily life and the outcome of our future in many ways. It is iteresint to think that there is one thing in life that you can compare things to before and after such as the plaque and even the development of technology.
Interesting thoughts on technology. I think many dystopian science fiction authors would agree with you!
DeleteI really only had a few questions while watching the video. I did not understand why they blamed the Jews for everything that was happening. Maybe they were all just so consumed with the situation at hand that they were not thinking logically and just blamed someone to blame them? I also don't understand how the plague stopped so suddenly. If it had been going on for that long, what made it just come to a sudden halt like that? Especially without a cure for it. And the last one was how did anyone stay alive? What did they do that everyone else didn't? Unless they completely isolated themselves, i don't understand how anyone could have lived. Overall I thought the videos were very entertaining and I liked watching them a lot.
ReplyDeleteI wonder if some people's bodies were just resistant. In the same way that today, if someone in your family has the flu, it's not a guarantee that you will get it.
DeleteI found it extremely interesting that even today no one really knows what they Black Plague actually was. It is a huge mystery even to extremely advanced people of the medical field. It is extremely interesting that even with the advancements in technology, there is no true way of discovering how the Plague came about. This may raise concerns that the Plague could reoccur today. I wonder if it did occur, how people would react differently than they did in the 1300's. Also, I wonder if doctors today would be able to discover a cure for the mysterious disease. It would be interesting to see if people would lose their faith because they would lose hope in God, or if they would gain faith in hopes that he would be the only way for it to cease.
ReplyDeleteI think what was most surprising to me was the amount of people that were persistent to live and would do anything to stay alive. It seems that will all the death and grief flooding in, many of the people would have wanted to die or at the very least gone into deep depression. It seems that the survivors were very driven to make a better life for themselves and the the coming generations. It also amazes me that their was no cure for this disease, just like in today's society, many lives have been taken from cancer but there is yet to be a cure. Was the plaque a sign from god? If so, why would the plaque been introduced and why was their never a cure?
ReplyDeleteI wonder how I would have dealt with this plaque? Or how my family would have been effected? I wonder how differently it would have been in today's society, would the world become chacos?
After watching the videos, I too had a few questions. How did the Black Death actually stop without a known cure? Did people really just drop all contact with EVERYONE and those with the illness eventually died off? How did other countries react after hearing about the events happening in Italy and its surrounding countries? I don't ever want to experience something so terrifying that bodies were literally being thrown outside because the death rate was so high. Having the constant fear of dying or having loved ones get sick and die is no way to live one's life. An apect that did surprise me was that at the time of the Black Death, when the doctors could not find a cure the people turned to religion. Nowadays, that notion would be laughed at and turned away from. It was interesting to me to see that the faith the people had back in the 19th century and the faith that people may have today...
ReplyDeleteIt could no longer survive in a human host cell.
DeleteWhat that means, I have no idea!
DeleteI had a few questions that I thought about after watching the video. What stopped the disease? How did it end without a cure? Why would family members abandon each other when one of them got one of the disease? They wanted to live so badly that they would abandon their own children? Why would the doctors and priests continue to visit the sick and care for them when it was clear that nothing could be done to stop it or cure the dying? I did not understand why some people survived the disease and why some of them never caught it at all. I also did not understand where the disease came from. I remember the video said that the men returning from the Black Sea apparently carried it over but what gave it to them? Overall, I thought the video was interesting and I liked how it gave points of view from every place and position in society.
ReplyDeleteI personally wondered how people could turn so easily and selfishly away from their families and friends without a second thought.
ReplyDeleteI also wondered about our own society, and how it would cope with such a widescale catastrophe. I think we have the capabilities now to get a greater handle on the situation, but at the same time I am not sure. We have had the Swine Flu and Bird Flu in our time, but it has not reached the magnitude of the Black Plague.
I also wondered what group of people would be blamed in the spread of such a disease in our time, and if many people would begin to blindly follow and persecute these people.
My biggest question is why did the plague stop when there was no cure? Also did it still go on in the other countries while it spread to others?
ReplyDeleteI did not have many questions to ask about the lague to what I have learned from history class and other forms of history teaching. The main things that suprised the most were all the violence that happened during it. I did not really hear in deep deagtils about how groups of soldiers would just go around and kill people to have food. That was pretty horrific. The part that always intrigues me is what medicine was like back then. Compared to what we have to do, it is very primitive. For instance the one of the doctors used a mixture that had a gum and dried human excrement in it. Just thinking about makes no sense. I also went into thought about what it would be like for me at this time and to me it seemed that it would be very scary not knowing if you were going to catch the disease or not.
ReplyDeleteWhile watching this video, many thoughts and ideas arose in my mind. First, I wondered how so many people could deal with the amount of death. Did they become almost numb to it? I feel like you would have had to. I think you would have had to just accept the fact that at any moment your friend or family member could be taken from you. I found this frightening because I cannot imagine having to live like that. You would never be able to become extremely attached to someone because at any moment they could have been ripped away from you. Then I began to wonder how anyone was ever dependent on someone else. For example, most high school kids today are extremely dependent on their parents for everything. Back then, children would have to learn quickly how to care for themselves and provide themselves with what they needed. I found this interesting to think about becuase at any moment their parents could die and they would probably be left with nothing. Overall, I found the videos to be both informative and insightful. I thought they were a good way to understand how people lived during the time when the plague struck the European continent.
ReplyDeleteI have always known the Black Plague as what it is and what it generally did. I never have gone in depth on the specifics and the effects of it. This is what I was able to learn in the video. One of the questions I have is how did the disease gradually disappear? Did human genetics start to become immune since there was no true cure? How come only Europe is the only continent to be associated with the disease? Did it exist in other continents also? Also, what evidence is there to consider using the Jews as a scapegoat in this case? I don't get how people and families could left to die for themselves. It was everyone for themselves which I found very surprising. Unity did not exist like it does today. It is also amazing how when it comes to life and death, the mind begins to play tricks on you, making see and think things you wouldn't normally. It will take you to the extreme and do crazy things. People were easily persuaded. Another thing that was surprising how back then everyone turned to religious hands for the cure where everyone today would put pressure on scientists to find a cure. Now I wonder how would things be different if a similar situation would occur. Would we be prepared this time, or would we face a similar fate? WOuld the technology and information we have today allow us to beat it easily? How would we react in today's time?
ReplyDeleteAfter watching both videos, i had a lot of intriguing questions such as how would you not get sick at the fact that everyone around you is dying, and you don't even know if you are next? How could you deal with the thought that your family and loved ones could possibly all be dead within a week, leaving you alone in the world forever? I wonder if all of one's family and friends died from the plague, if it would even be worth living in such a terrible and sickening age of time? After watching the video, it made me sick seeing the possible side effects, and i wondered why doctors would ever risk infection themselves and treat these horribly looking patients? What if this really did happen in our modern age? Could it easily be fixed by our advancement and technology in this era, or would even the black plague be too powerful to defeat in our generation? It's very scary to think that something of this magnitude could happen today, and how society would be effected by it, for generations to come.
ReplyDeleteThe plague overall is a catastrophic event that terrorized Europe. Even though we have learned about the plague in past years, I found that I retained the knowledge better this time around. In the video it stated that if one family member was sick, the rest of the family would catch the disease unless they abandoned the home. I find this difficult to fathom even for today's standards; I would have been fearful and distraught. People used religion as a way to ward it off even though it wasn’t effective. I wonder how America today would cope with such an outbreak? Our society is becoming increasingly secular and I wonder if religion would crumble along with the disease. How was the plague contained to just Europe? How fairly was the land really divided and did this cause underlying class divisions? Although the plague was tragic, I do find it interesting that many peasants gained better rights and more land. In addition to increased rights, medicine was also improved. Clinical knowledge of medicine was introduced rather than solely theoretical knowledge. If this were to have happened in our time would we have the modern medicine to find a cure? How does this compare to our knowledge of medicine today? The questioning attitudes and increased individualism led to the flouring of culture in Europe. How much of an impact does the plague that happened many years ago have on today's society?
ReplyDeleteHonestly something that I wonder is how the plague didn't wipe out the entire European population. Over 50% of the people in every city got sick and died. The disease was everywhere and was spread very easily, so I don't understand how sick bdoies could be thrown out in the street and some people still came out alive when there wasn't even a cute. Something that I had never thought about before was the reprecussions, for example, even though there was more money flow it was very hard to find people to do work, so people had to pay the workers more for their time. I thought it was interesting how there was so much more land available that the poor people were given the opportunity to become successful. I find it interesting that this catastrophe led to one of the biggest flourishments of art and culture in history.If something like this happened today would we come back stronger like these people did? Would our society even be able to stabalize at all with a hit like this? I honestly don't think so.
ReplyDeleteIt surprises me that you don't think we could make it! I'm curious about why you think so!
DeleteAfter watching both of the videos, I was left with a few unsanswered questions. My biggest question, regarded how the plague stopped spreading. No one in the medical field at the time of the plague came anywhere close to developing a cure for the disease, but one day it just suddenly stopped spreading throughout Europe? Did the people finally build up an immunity to the disease, or did it stop spreading simply because the remaining healthy people were born with an immunity to the disease? Another question that I had, was how did the plague not spread to other parts of the world? With the elaborate trade network that was described in the first video, I would've thought that the disease would've spread to every corner of the globe, but instead in stayed only in Europe. It's kind of scary thinking about what would happen if something like the Black Death was to happen in the world today. As I thought about it more, I began to realise that it really wouldn't be that difficult for a new disease to spread throughout the world, meaning that it wouldn't be that difficult for a new disease to kill millions upon millions of people if the medical field could not develop a cure for it quickly.
ReplyDeleteWhile I was watching these two videos I thought that they were both interesting. There were many things that struck me as perplexing but one of the things that really caught my attention was in the first video, the man was treating himself while he had this disease and the man was cured. I thought that at the extent this disease was spreading that it would be really hard to cute yourself of the disease, if you get cured at all. I was also questioning how this plague didn't spread to other parts of the world during this time period. I know that the video had said that there were traveling restrictions but with the seriousness of this disease I would think that there would be restrictions on more than that. Because it was said that the people would die mostly within 24 hours of contracting the disease which I also found to be interesting. I thought this was a crazy statistic because it's as if someone you've known all your life was here yesterday and then they got a random disease and now they're not on the earth anymore, I just can't wrap my mind around how the disease spread so quickly.
ReplyDeleteWhile I was watching these videos I was wondering what would happen if we got a disease like that today. Would we fair any better? I feel like we would have our hosipitals overload for a short time and many people would die before we really knew what to do. However I think we would do better now because we woujld find a cure if everyone was dying. However the people of poor nations would be in trouble because no one would be able to help them because we would all be fousused on ourselves.
ReplyDeleteThat is such a good question--I wondered the same thing! So I looked it up...are you ready? The bacteria which caused the Black Death has descendents which still exist, even in the U.S. today! Right now we have antibiotics powerful enough to fight it, but a resistant strain could still become a threat.
ReplyDeleteIt must have been terrifying especially when doctors and priest abandoned you or died themselves. No one knew the cure so it seemed inevitable that everyone would die. I don't know what I would have don. If I fled I may have just stumbled into another plague ridden town and died there. If I had stayed I would have been stewing in the remains of everyone who had died or was dying. The people who left everything and everyone infected must have been breave, heartless, or just intensely rational.
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