e. Hoping to infect the Italians, the natives used catapults
that where normally reserved for large boulders or dead animals to throw dead or dying bodies of
those infected with the plague over the barrier. They succeeded. When the traders fled to Sicily,
they carried the plague with them. (Strayer, 1972)
The plague first arrived in Messina, Sicily in October 1347, but it would not stop there.
Aware of the rate at which the plague would spread, the Sicilian officials tried to contain the
disease by forcing the twelve men on board who were left alive to stay on the ship. But black
rats, which carried fleas that where contaminated with the plague, managed to get off the ship and
enter the city. Within eight months, the plague had spread throughout the island and the rats
which carried the plague had boarded ships that were headed for mainland Italy and the rest of
Europe. (Strayer, 1972) Despite the efforts of city officials, the plague continued to spread. They
had ignored it too long, now it was out of their hands.
The plague spread through port cities quickly because it is transmitted by rat fleas. The
fleas, which spread the plague, would catch the bacteria from a rat who had already acquired the
disease. The bacteria would then completely fills the stomach of the flea, making it so the flea
could no longer digest any blood. It would then be so hungry that it would sucks blood into its
already full stomach, forcing it to regurgitate, thus spreading the bacteria. (Walker, 1992) A
disease that is spread by rats would probably not pose a big problem to most places in the 21st
century, but in the 14th century there were many rats aboard most ships and few people took
notice to them, as they were such a common fixture in the unclean living habits. Because people
were so accustomed to them, these rodents carried the plague from port to port with no one
realizing that they were the a...