rats and the fleas scurried off the ships and spreaded throughout the major trade routes and through the cities and countryside's of Europe (Ziegler, 1969).
             The Bubonic Plague has a very structured transmission process. It beings with the infected rodent (the black rat) who then transmits the disease to the oriental rat flea; these fleas live on the rats and ingest infected blood when they feed on them, thus themselves becoming infected by the bacteria. The oriental rat flea normally lives only on rats, but the plague takes the same toll on rats as it does humans so they too die off. When this happens the flea must find another host. And due to the blockage of bacteria that takes place within the fleas' stomach, the flea must feed on host that exhale carbon dioxide, host like carbon-dioxide exhaling humans. When the flea bites the human host, it does two things. It takes blood and squirts saliva or partly digested blood into the host. This is how the plague bacteria infection gets passed into the human host (Gottfried, 1983).
             Once in the human body, the bacterium first causes flu-like symptoms and a high fever. Next it invades lymph nodes. Those nodes, in the neck, armpits and inner thigh area swell up. From this people started to refer to a swollen node as a "bubo" therefore obtaining the name "Bubonic Plague" (Gottfried, 1983).
             In the role of the disease progressing, the victim bleeds internally and produces bloody urine and bloody stools. Dried blood puddling under the skin forms black boils of which appear all over the body gives the Bubonic Plague it's name "the Black Death" (Gottfried, 1983). From then the infection went on to become transmitted easily from person to person by normal contact and if someone in a household contracted the disease the whole household had to prepare to die (Tuchman, 1978).
             Life before the plague consisted of contrast between classe...