The bubonic plague, or as it is more familiarly known, The Black Death, swept through Europe in the mid 14-century. The epidemic is said to have killed off 25 to 50 percent of the European population between 1347 and 1351. The debilitating disease took only three to five days to kill an untreated victim. The plague had negative, social effects on Europe, being a contributing factor to the cause of the Peasants' Rebellion, as well as serious Economic hardships among Europeans.
             The bubonic plague is " an acute infection in humans and various species of rodents, cause by Yersinia pestis, a bacterium transmitted by fleas that have fed on the blood of infected rodents, usually rats." (Microsoft Bookshelf 98). The epidemic got its name from the black spots that appeared on the bodies of its victims. Symptoms included high fever, and swelling of the lymph glands. The pneumonic plague, a relative of the bubonic plague, attacked the lungs, after healthy humans breathed in the airborne virus from the waste of those infected with the disease. Both forms brought death within a few days.
             The Black Death was carried to Europe from the Middle East by rats on merchant vessels. Arriving in southern Italy in the summer of 1347, it soon spread by trade routes to Spain and France. It reached England in 1348, Germany in 1349, and Russia in 1350. When the plague struck, Europe was completely helpless against it. There was no natural immunity to the disease, and so everyone was a potential victim. The conditions in the cities were even worse: the standards of public health and personal hygiene among the crowded slums were virtually non-existent.
             Socially, the Black Death started a heretic and a religious movement among medieval Europe. A given "40% of England's clergy dies in the years 1348-1350." (Bond Men Made Free, Hilton, R.H., 1973, p...