 Stories and content in Weird Darkness can be disturbing for some listeners and is intended for mature audiences only. Parental discretion is strongly advised. You wake up on a cloudy morning in late 1348 and glance out your window. Outside, you see carts hauling off lifeless bodies of those you considered friends and neighbors, and you can hear the wails of the mourners. You run down to the street to see what's happened, and a man wearing a terrifying bird-like mask claiming to be a doctor says you don't look too good. Suddenly you notice the sweat on your forehead and a pounding headache. You rush back inside and ask a loved one to check your armpits and groin for dark swelling. Thank heavens they don't find any. As your fever rages, you rush to examine your astrological chart. After all, everyone knows the stars can cause disease. But before you find the chart, you remember a strange thing you saw recently, a comet streaking across the night sky. The evil comet must have caused your sickness. With sweat pouring down your face, you run out of your house again, desperate to get to the nearest church. If God sent this sickness, your best protection now would be the prayers of a priest. But when you arrive, the church is empty. You remember when talking to the doctor on the street, you saw a cart filled with the dead and one of them wearing priestly robes. Apparently religion didn't protect them, so why would it protect you? Perhaps the church isn't the best place to protect yourself from disease after all. Maybe penitence is the answer, or better punishment for your sins. Barely able to walk now, you stumble over to a group of people gathered in the town square. The flagellants, religious penitents punishing themselves to repent. You stagger over and ask for a lash, watching the men and women trying to placate an angry God. Even though the dark swelling in your armpits and groin hasn't appeared yet, you can tell something is terribly wrong. Your head aches, your limbs feel weak, the lashes only made you feel worse. You stumble back to your house and fall into bed. Thankfully, another nearby doctor notices your trauma and offers to help. When you ask him for his medical credentials, he ignores your question, but you're too weak to fight back. The doctor pulls out two live chickens and tries to strap them to your armpits. He claims it helps with the dark swellings. When he sees you don't have any swelling yet, he offers you a potion that glows like silver. Since you're already nearing your end, you drink it. Is that strange taste mercury or arsenic? As you fall into a feverish unconsciousness, the doctor takes all your savings which you had hidden under your mattress and leaves you to perish alone. You've only been sick for a few hours, but already you can barely breathe. You drift in and out of consciousness, your breath becoming shorter and shorter until you perish. You succumbed to the Black Death, the most prolific epidemic in human history. The plague claimed the lives of millions with nearly half of Europe's population perishing from the disease. Some feared they were living through the apocalypse amidst the chaotic upheaval, while others turned to sinful pleasure during the plague to distract from the horror. And as for what happened to victims of the plague, well, it wasn't opportune. Surviving the Black Death wasn't easy. How did someone protect themselves from it and who did they blame when they got sick? What happened to their body as the infection spread? Regardless of religion, age or status, the only certainty was demise. The bubonic plague didn't spare anyone. I'm Darren Marlar and this is Weird Darkness. Welcome, Weirdos. I'm Darren Marlar and this is Weird Darkness. Here you'll find stories of the paranormal, supernatural, legends, lore, the strange and bizarre, crime, conspiracy, mysterious, macabre, unsolved and unexplained. Coming up in this episode. During the bubonic plague in the early Middle Ages, those who became sick and were even suspected of having the plague were forced to relocate to a quarantined island, Hoveglia Island. The gruesomeness that took place there still continues today, with the island being illegal to visit and reportedly very haunted. About 80 years after the Black Plague began, a different plague came upon England, a fatal one that would cause you to almost instantly perspire to death. Europe just could not escape plagues of any kind, for example the plague that made you against your will keep dancing until you dropped dead. Most everyone is familiar with the plague in Europe in the early 1400s, but in the early 1900s it struck again, this time in San Francisco. If you have not heard that before, it could be because the US government tried to cover it up. We look at some of the bathing or lack thereof that took place during the bubonic plague, as well as some of the beliefs they had about diet and how it might protect from contagion. Some of the ideas of what people thought could protect them from the disease are nothing short of shocking. Of all the imagery that comes to mind when hearing the words bubonic plague, the most prevalent is most certainly that of the doctors and the odd bird-like masks that they would wear. Why they dressed that way is interesting, but what the doctors did while wearing those suits and in their labs as they tried to battle the illness is absolutely horrifying. And it probably comes as no surprise that something so deadly and horrific as the black plague would leave behind some residual paranormal energy. And boy is there a lot of it. If you're new here, welcome to the show! And while you're listening, be sure to check out WeirdDarkness.com for merchandise, my newsletter, to win our contests, to connect with me on social media. Plus, you can visit the Hope in the Darkness page if you're struggling with depression or dark thoughts. You can find all of that and more at WeirdDarkness.com. Now, bolt your doors, lock your windows, turn off your lights, and come with me into the Weird Darkness. Known as one of the most illegal places one could but really shouldn't visit, Poveglia Island sits just off the coast of northern Italy, near Venice. When most people begin planning a trip to that part of the world, images of romantic walkways and Renaissance art come to mind. Haunted islands, on the other hand, generally don't rank very high on anyone's must-see list. But some visitors are still curious about the small, infamous Italian island that once hosted thousands of refugee black plague victims, serving as a quarantine island for those who were even suspected of harboring the bacteria. The island remains one of the most haunted places in Italy, and despite the fact that it is illegal to visit Poveglia, thrill-seekers continue to consider it a cool, albeit creepy, destination. However, everyone who has taken the chance of stepping foot on the island has left with absolutely no desire to ever return. The Italian island of Poveglia has a history chock full of tragic events going back thousands of years. During the Roman Empire, the island was used to house victims of the plague in order to protect the rest of the country, forcing inflicted people to live and die in isolation. Then, during the medieval era, when the plague returned and killed off nearly two-thirds of Europe's population, Poveglia was once again called upon to take in the sick and dying. Dead bodies quickly began to overcrowd the island, and thousands were dumped into large, common graves. In many cases, the bodies were burned. Some overly cautious Italian communities even got into the habit of shipping away anyone who showed the slightest signs of illness. Many of those people had not actually been infected with the plague at all, and were literally dragged to Poveglia and dumped atop piles of rotting corpses. The terrifying negative energy that has been left in the wake of these deaths remains, even in the island's very soil. Poveglia Island still happens to be home to thriving grape vineyards. Nearly the only people who dare visit the island these days are those who go to seasonally harvest the fruit. Grapevines must do well in ashy soil because it has been said that more than 50% of the island's soil is composed of human ash. Yes, over thousands of years that is just how many people have perished and rotted on the Nightmarish Island. When a mental hospital was opened on Poveglia Island in 1922, a few people were very surprised. However, the arrival of droves of mentally disturbed patients to the island only served to enrich the legend of it being a place to avoid. The isolation and privacy offered by the island also allowed for disreputable scientists and doctors to do as they pleased to their patients. Reports of widespread abuse and heinous experiments began to float back to the mainland, bringing with them the screams of the tortured souls trapped there. Poveglia legend tells of a particularly demented doctor who worked at the island's mental hospital in the early 20th century. His notorious experiments on patients are still shocking when told today. For instance, he believed that lobotomies were a great way to treat and cure mental illness, so he performed lobotomies on numerous patients, usually against their will. The procedures were heinously wicked and painful, too. He used hammers, chisels and drills with no anesthesia or concern for sanitation. He supposedly saved his darkest experiments for his special patients, whom he took to the hospital's bell tower. Whatever he did there, the screams from those being tortured could be heard across the island. Karma eventually caught up with the wicked doctor. According to the story, the doctor began to suffer his own mental torture and was pursued by the island's multitude of ghosts. Eventually, he lost his mind and climbed to the top of the bell tower and flung himself to his death below. There are varying accounts of his death, though. Some say he may actually have been pushed either by an angry island spirit or by one of his furious patients. Supposedly a nurse witnessed his fall claiming that he initially survived but that a ghostly mist overcame his body and choked him to death. Somehow the mental hospital remained open until 1968. Many believe that hundreds of thousands of tormented souls still remain trapped on Poveglia Island. From the massive influx of plague victims who were forced onto the island to those who were tortured at the mental hospital that was once stationed there, a sense of sorrow and suffering continues to permeate from the island to this day. In fact, it has even been said that you can still hear their screams. Visitors to Poveglia have been forbidden for decades. Of course, that doesn't stop the occasional thrill seeker from taking a boat over to the island. Some look at it as a dare. Others are genuinely interested in experiencing a bit of the paranormal. However, all who venture there return shaken. One thing visitors report experiencing is the sensation of being watched. Others report being scratched and pushed by invisible forces. Some entities have even been said to push visitors into walls or chase them down corridors. With a history like that of Poveglia Islands, it stands to reason that the spirit of the tortured patients at the mental hospital would join up with the innumerable spirits of plague victims. Visitors to the hospital during its final years of operation as well as illegal visitors since then have reported harrowing paranormal experiences inside the buildings and on the grounds. Visitors report seeing shadows on the walls moving along with them as they explore the decaying facility. And a handful of psychics who have been brought to the island claim that there is an energy that could only be described as malignant, with the presence of the angry spirits lingering there so deeply frightening psychics and paranormal experts that most of them refuse to ever return. With more than a hundred thousand plague victims and mental patients buried on the small island of Poveglia, it is no surprise that human bones continue to wash up on its shores. This fact alone is enough to creep out any potential visitors or buyers. Even fishermen steer clear of Poveglia's shallows for fear of picking up human bones in their nets. When the mental hospital on Poveglia was finally closed in 1968, the island was sold to a private owner. However, he did not have it for very long before selling it to yet another owner and in both instances the new owners could not bear to spend time there. The atmosphere was heavy and morbid. Strange sounds combined with all of the hauntings that had been reported continued to prevail. As a result, the island was left completely abandoned. It has come up for sale again, but the deals continue to fall through. Maybe prospective owners have heard too many frightening tales in advance. Years after Poveglia Island's mental hospital was shut down, a family decided to purchase the island, intending to build a private holiday home there. They arrived and got settled in on the first day excited to begin their new adventure, but that very first night was filled with such horrors that within hours the family fled never to return. They reported that their daughter's face was nearly ripped off by an angry resident entity. Amid the numerous reports from illegal visitors is the story of a curiosity thrill seeker who went to Poveglia with a group of friends. Upon entering the abandoned mental hospital, the illegal tourist reported a heavy sense of dread to send down around them, followed by a deep voice that warned, leave immediately and do not return. The visitors immediately complied. Poveglia holds the dubious distinction of being listed as one of the world's most illegal places to visit. Even though trespassers know that they will be sternly prosecuted under Italian law, bold, curious and perhaps foolhardy travelers from all over the world continue to explore the paranormal possibilities by visiting the island illegally. Venice initially used the island to quarantine visitors before they entered the city. As an important trading post, many people came and went. Venice had the strictest of sanitary laws. The government required all traders to live on Poveglia for 40 days before Venice allowed them into the city. The state was not torturous, however, like it was for plague victims. People had their own rooms and sometimes even their own apartments. They ate, drank and had contact with the outside world through email and also contact on the inside with tortured spirits. Up next on Weird Darkness, we look at some of the bathing and lack thereof that took place during the bubonic plague as well as some of the beliefs they had about diet and how it might protect from contagion. Some of the ideas of what people thought could protect them from the disease are nothing short of shocking. This story and a plague of others are still to come. My doc agrees that I need to lose a few pounds. I knew that going in. But he also told me that the meds I'm taking for my type 2 diabetes aren't going to do me much good if I finish each meal with ice cream or cheesecake. I kind of knew that in advance too. But cutting back on carbs and sugars is a lot easier said than done. I've tried a lot of protein bars while on the road, but I swear it's like eating non-sweetened chocolate-dusted particle board. But now I travel with built bars. Built bars taste like candy bars. In fact, I'm now using them for my dessert. And at about 150 calories per bar, less than 3 grams of sugar, up to 19 grams of protein, I can satisfy my sweet cravings guilt-free. Visit WeirdDarkness.com slash Built in Try a Box. You can go for a variety pack of several flavors to try or pick and choose to build a box of your own. Use the promo code WeirdDarkness at checkout and get 10% off your entire purchase. That's WeirdDarkness.com slash Built. What was hygiene like during the Black Death? In the 14th century, the bubonic plague swept through Europe, wiping out as many as 50 million people or more than half the continent. During this time, it was common for people to dump their chamber pots in the streets and sleep on dirty straw. These unsanitary practices attracted rodents and spread disease. Could better hygiene have prevented the black plague? Ironically, several common medical practices helped spread the disease. For example, doctors suggested lancing boobos and drinking the pus of the afflicted. And in spite of sanitation policies like burying plagued bodies in deep pits outside of town, some cities were so overwhelmed that dogs dragged the cadavers back through the streets. Unfortunately, those who practiced better hygiene weren't much better off. In some areas, the Jewish population saw a lower mortality rate from plague than Christians, likely because of their sanitary traditions. In response, Christians accused Jews of tainting wells and eliminated them en masse. While Europe had a foul hygiene and sanitation record during the plague era, records indicate that people who survived the black plague tended to live longer and healthier lives. Europe wasn't the cleanest place in the 14th century. Fleas and lice thrived and grime was omnipresent. Bathing was not an everyday occurrence for commoners. However, most peasants began their day by at least washing their hands and face. The ubiquitous fleas spread diseases like the plague, the tiny insects bit rats infected with the plague, and then jumped to humans, causing an epidemic. Doctors of the era never identified fleas as the cause of the plague, though. As a result, people continued to sleep on straw, teeming with vermin without realizing their poor hygiene was spreading diseases. Contrary to the stereotype, medieval Europeans did take baths. The rich bathed in private tubs while everyone else dunked in streams or visited public baths. One treatment for the plague even recommended bathing. Instead of bathing in water, though, one source recommended bathing in vinegar and rose water. Vinegar, a common medieval medical treatment, was considered a great tool in stopping the plague. Plague doctors sometimes washed their hands in vinegar or placed vinegar sponges in their masks. Another recommendation called for bathing in your own urine to treat the plague. While Europe's Jewish communities also perished from the plague, their personal hygiene rituals, which included washing their hands, may have prevented them from experiencing as high a mortality rate as their Christian neighbors. Christians, in turn, drew the wrong lesson from this disparity. Christians claimed Jews couldn't catch the plague and accused them of tainting wells to spread the disease. The communities were vilified, oppressed, and compelled to confess to nefarious deeds they did not commit. According to the Nuremberg Chronicle, in 1348 all the Jews in Germany were burned, having been accused of poisoning the wells as many of them confessed. Doctors in the 14th century had no idea how to treat the plague. Ironically, many of their treatments actually spread the disease. For example, plague sufferers experienced swelling in their lymph nodes called buboes. Doctors recommended cutting open the buboes to let the disease leave the body, and then they applied a mixture of resin, plant roots, and dried feces to the wounds. One treatment even recommended drinking the pus from lancet buboes in almost certainly fatal suggestion. Towns and cities struggled with disposing of the overwhelming number of cadavers during the plague, fearing contamination Europeans tried to avoid the afflicted. According to Boca Chio, many perished daily or nightly in the public streets. Of many others who perished at home, the departure was hardly observed by their neighbors until the stench carried the tidings. Another chronicler in Florence wrote, All the citizens did little else except to carry the slain to be buried. Cities turned to mass graves to dispose of the cadavers, but they didn't always protect the living from infection. According to Agnolo de Tura, some of the burial sites were so sparsely covered with earth that the dogs dragged cadavers forth and devoured many. Before indoor plumbing, human waste created a public health crisis. In the 14th century, townsfolk might share a toilet with dozens of households. Or, instead of walking to a communal cesspit to dispose of waste, many simply emptied their chamber pots into the street. Rain or floods caused the cesspits to overflow, sending human waste into the water supply. Open sewers attracted rats and vermin, which spread diseases like the plague. Having begun to see the connection between affluence and disease, England's parliament tried to stop people from dumping waste into the water supply. In 1388, the body declared so much dung and filth of the garbage and entrails be cast and put into ditches, rivers and other waters that the air there has grown greatly corrupt and infected, and many maladies and other intolerable diseases do daily happen. In the 14th century, Europeans believed foul smells spread disease. In an attempt to combat the plague, they carried sweet-smelling flowers and palminders to cleanse the air. Doctors developed the plague doctor costume that has become emblematic of the era. The bird-like mask held dried roses, herbs like mint, or spices thought to protect against infection. Doctors donned the mask and a full body covering when treating victims of the plague. The outlandish outfit may have indeed warded against infection, though not because of the herbs and spices. Being covered head to toe meant the unwitting doctors were basically wearing a medieval hazmat suit. Black plague came in not one but three varieties, bubonic, pneumonic and septicemic. Bubonic plague spread via flea bites, pneumonic afflicted the lungs, and septicemic went straight into the bloodstream. Of the three, those who contracted the bubonic form had the highest, though still meager chance of survival. The septicemic plague, however, was virtually unstoppable. It had a mortality rate of 100%. Bloodletting was one of the most popular medical treatments in the 14th century. Doctors often treated fevers by bleeding their patients to remove heat from the body, and bleeding was used on plague patients. Doctors believed the plague infected the blood. As a result, they recommended cutting open veins to let the disease leave the body. However, the medical treatment also exposed doctors and others to the septicemic form of the plague. In the 14th century, Europeans often laid straws or rushes on their floors. Straws covered up the dirt floor in poor people's homes. While wildflowers were sometimes added to the rushes and the top layer changed occasionally, the bottom layers might remain for decades. In the 16th century, Erasmus was disturbed to find that in many homes, the bottom layer is left undisturbed, sometimes for 20 years, harboring expectoration, vomiting, the leakage of dogs and men, ale droppings, scraps of fish and other abominations not fit to be mentioned. These putrid rushes exhaled a vapor that was harmful to the health, Erasmus declared. They also attracted rodents and let bacteria flourish. The black plague wiped out tens of millions of Europeans, but history's deadliest epidemic had a surprising benefit for survivors. According to research by Dr. Sharon DeWitt, the plague improved the health and lifespan of people who lived through it. For 200 years afterward, people's diets improved and they lived longer than pre-plague Europeans. Scholars point to several potential explanations for the improvements. The smaller population following the plague enjoyed higher wages and cheaper food prices, which helps explain the better diets, and survivors of the plague might have been less frail overall since the plague eliminated so many people. When the black plague struck, Europeans knew the disease was contagious. In some areas, cities tried to ban ships from infected areas to protect their population. In 1348, Venice became the first to enforce a 30-day isolation period for ships and travelers to make sure that they weren't infected. In later outbreaks of plague, the city extended the isolation to 40 days, giving birth to the term Quarantine from the Italian Quaranta, meaning 40. Unfortunately, even those efforts failed to stop the spread of disease. Tens of thousands still perished in Venice. The doctor to Pope Clement VI, Guida Sholiak, said the epidemic shamed Europe's doctors. They dared not visit the sick, he said, for fear of being infected, and when they did visit them, they did hardly anything for them. Dr. Sholiak instructed Pope Clement VI to sit alone between two bonfires. The doctor claimed this treatment would cleanse the air and prevent infection. While the fires themselves may have had the inadvertent effect of keeping plague-written rats at bay, the forced isolation did keep the Pope alive during the plague. When the Black Plague struck Europe in the 14th century, people didn't have much time to worry about their diets. Still, doctors warned that the most popular food and drinks in medieval England, such as fresh fruit and vegetables, could make people sick. Deemed healthy were items like meats, vinegar, and cooked fruit. For roughly three centuries afterward, millions of Europeans succumbed to sickness. The effects of the Black Plague influenced medieval food culture and directly shaped the way we live now. Life during the epidemic was bleak. People who woke up healthy could be gone by nightfall, so it's not surprising that wine and beer were incredibly popular during this time. Doctors declared that some foods spread illness while others promoted health, but their advice didn't always line up with what was readily available. Peasants, for example, might have eaten three pounds of grain each day because it was their cheapest option. Surprising medieval food facts like the popularity of almond milk, soured milk, and peacocks changed the way we understand the era. Europeans believed vinegar was a panacea to prevent symptoms of the plague. Doctors used it as a medicine or potion and it was often recommended as an additive to other foods or drink. Vinegar was used in a wide variety of foods when cooking watery vegetables, fruits, soups, and dairy, the addition of substantial amounts of spice and vinegar were recommended. People also believed adding vinegar into water and wine would provide medicinal benefits. Lastly, to eliminate the bad humors that supposedly caused the illness, doctors recommended a syrup made from honey and vinegar. Medieval doctors also believed a vital part of promoting good health involved purifying the air. Within a tractate written by a 14th-century physician, John of Burgundy, it is evident that vinegar served as a general disinfectant as well as a medicine. Along with juniper branches and other deodorizers, vinegar cleared the air of harmful miasmas. Quite often, people were encouraged to wash their hands and faces in vinegar and rose water. The smell of the ether was thought to clean the air. Most medieval peasants owned a cow, sheep, or goat and would often milk their livestock to produce dairy products. But medieval Europeans generally didn't drink fresh milk. It would often spoil too quickly. The milk that didn't turn was reserved for sick people. Instead, peasants often drank soured milk or buttermilk and whey mixed with water. Among the wealthy, there was a different substitute for fresh milk. Almond milk. A German cookbook, Das Buch von Gutterspice, was published during the midst of the Great Plague and nearly one in four recipes used almond milk. One method called for cooked chicken, rice, sugar, and almond milk. A dessert recipe called for strawberries, wine, and almond milk. Almond milk was also used to treat the sick, as doctors believed it was easier to digest than whole almonds and could provide essential nutrients for the ill. Almonds, however, were expensive, so the nuts were reserved for only the wealthiest individuals. The nut had heavy associations with Greek and Arabic cooking, and though it was prevalent in Northern European recipes, it was not accessible to the majority of the population. During plague periods, eating fresh fruits was highly discouraged because the food was thought to carry disease. This association was such a prevalent belief that during a period in 1569, English authorities forbid the sale of fresh fruit. However, it does not mean medieval Europeans did not eat fruit. The most popular fruits were pears, apples, plums, damsons, cherries, and strawberries, and they were often used in pies preserved with sugar or dried for later consumption. Meat was commonly eaten throughout medieval Europe, and though different meats were served, their abundance and variety were determined by socioeconomic status. Due to how cheap and accessible the animals were, beef and mutton tended to be the most common meats. Many peasants owned cows and sheep, so when the animals were unable to produce milk or had reached a certain age, they were slain for sustenance. The aristocracy had much more varied menus, however. Peacocks, seals, and porpoises were served at banquets along with boar and other wild game. Europeans feared uncooked vegetables, believing that they caused disease. In 1500, a cookbook entitled The Boak of Carvine warned cooks to beware of green salads and raw fruits, for they will make your master sick. Though it may be for a different reason than medieval Europeans believed, it was probably wise for them to cook their vegetables, because it did affect public health. Historians have found records of vendors cleaning produce with their own saliva before selling it, which occurred until the late 18th century. An items association with particular social classes determined accessibility to vegetables. Medieval farmers grew many common vegetables including carrots, cabbage, and peas, but some, specifically carrots and cabbage, were associated with poverty. The saying, to live on carrots, meant not having anything else to eat. During the medieval era, many spices like cloves, cinnamon, and nutmeg were exotic and luxurious due to an Arab monopoly on the spice trade. They were imported into Europe from the East Indies, inaccessible in large quantities and expensive for most individuals. Many fresh herbs, however, were accessible to a broader European population. Herbs, the most common of which were sage, parsley, mint, and dill, were important ingredients in medicines. They were used to enhance the flavors of certain dishes. In addition, they served as a treatment for every kind of ailment. Coriander was used to quell fevers. Anise was meant to cure flatulence, and rosemary would supposedly stop nightmares. A dietary regimen estimated to have emerged between the 12th and 13th century places a heavy emphasis on drinking wine and ale, as well as on how to choose the best wines and brews to maintain a healthy lifestyle. They were perfect for drinking night or day. People often drank ale with breakfast and washed down dinner with spiced wine. If a person had too much wine the night before, the best cure was to have a drink in the morning. Though most alcoholic drinks were watered down, Europeans still turned to wine and beer instead of water throughout the era. There were specifications on finding the best wines and beers, however, because the wrong ones were considered a health risk. A good beer needed to be clear, not sour, and brewed from healthy grain, then properly fermented and aged. White wine was recommended as the most wholesome type of wine because red wine caused constipation and raucousness of the voice. Peasants during the era often ate three pounds of grain each day in the form of bread, thick porridge, or beer. When eating porridge, peasants sometimes used hollowed-out slices of bread in place of bowls. Positions even used bread to protect against plague. Writer, Bank Nutsen, reported that he carried a bread or sponge soft in vinegar when he visited those affected. Nutsen held the bread in front of his nose to block supposedly contagious vapors as well. Sugar was a valuable commodity during the late medieval period. It was transported to Europe from the East and West Indies as well as North Africa. Due to the high labor needed for cultivation, processing and transportation, though, sugar was expensive, but it was popular in the upper strata of European society, especially in England. It was used when cooking vegetables and preserving fruit, and people prescribed it as a medicine. Sugar was so abundant among the social elite that tooth decay became a distinguishing feature of the English aristocracy. During the plague era, Europeans ate a thickened grain mix in the form of gruel or porridge, sometimes served with vegetables. Gruel and porridge was a food staple primarily for economically disadvantaged Europeans because it lasted a long time and people could mix it into any available food. The dish inspired an old rhyme, peas porridge hot, peas porridge cold, peas porridge in the pot nine days old. Potting was another common variation, a thick soup of grains, vegetables and meat. People sometimes ate it off a thick slice of bread called a trencher. The plague extended beyond the 14th century. There were periods where it reemerged in Europe and altered food culture. In the 1600s, for example, the popularity of lemonade may have prevented the spread in Paris. When a new wave spread in the 1670s, Paris was spared. Food writer Tom Nealon speculates that lemon peels may explain the mystery of why it stopped outside of Paris. Chemicals and lemon peels eliminated the fleas that had historically spread the affliction. When rats on the streets of Paris chewed on the lemon peels, they may have also helped ward off the fleas. While Europeans didn't intentionally drink lemonade for its health benefits, the new beverage fad may have protected an entire city. You might think such a devastating and oh-so-medieval pestilence has little to do with our 21st century world, but you'd be wrong. The modern impact of the Black Death is evident all around us, from our hospitals to our Halloween costumes. Exploring how the Black Death changed the world reveals that there is very little that wasn't impacted by death and disease at such a massive level. Among the effects the Black Death had on Europe was a change to the genetics of modern Europeans. The plague literally changed who modern Europeans are all the way down to their DNA. The implications are both positive and negative. Subsequent encounters with the bacteria responsible for the Black Death, Yersinia pestis likely went a bit better thanks to the genetic shift. Later outbreaks never matched the ferocity of the original. And this may also explain why modern-day Europeans are more susceptible to autoimmune diseases and pro-inflammatory diseases than populations whose ancestors didn't experience the Black Death. The culture of the English pub can be traced directly back to the Black Death according to one historian. Professor Robert Toomes from Cambridge University says that wages rose and prices fell following the plague, allowing working people easier access to beer. Pubs sprang up to accommodate the demand, sparking English pub culture. Brewers could operate full time thanks to the greater freedom and prosperity for the working class in the wake of the Black Death. The history of North America would have looked a whole lot different if the Black Death never happened. Viking settlers in Greenland all but completely died out due to the plague and attacks by natives, so they were never able to get a foothold on mainland North America and properly settle the place. Norway was enfeebled by the plague as well, so it couldn't get supplies to the settlements in Greenland founded centuries prior by Eric the Red. Things got so bad that Greenland had to be rediscovered in 1585. Metalheads and Halloween lovers have the Black Death to thank for the popular image of death as a grim reaper. The widespread death and disease changed the visual arts at the time to focus more on death and dying to a macabre degree. Death became personified in the form of the scythe toting grim reaper, a menacing figure that preyed upon the rich and the poor equally. The Black Death helped people to realize that death truly is democratic. It killed millions of people and tore families apart which made it extremely difficult for survivors to figure out inheritances and who exactly owned pieces of property, especially when all the male heirs were wiped out. Family squabbles over such issues led to litigation on a level unheard of prior to the plague which led to further litigation that set precedents in property law that still stand today. One historian notes that barristers from the time would function just fine in today's courts. Here's Norman Cantor on the matter. A barrister of 1350 deep frozen and thawed out today would need only a six-month refresher course at a first-rate American law school to practice properly on real estate law. The Black Death allowed one Mongol warrior to use disease as a weapon on the battlefield. Janneberg was a Mongol military commander who inherited the empire left behind by Genghis Khan. In 1346 Janneberg wanted to take over the city of Kafa, a trade port on the Black Sea in Crimea. The Black Death however was depleting his ranks and making the prospect of conquering Kafa less and less likely. Janneberg came up with a thoroughly revolting plan to overcome this setback. He started catapulting his dead soldiers over Kafa's city walls and it worked. The people of Kafa fled to Italy, victims of the first known instance of biological warfare. Jewish people were blamed by many for the Black Death, especially in Germany. People were desperate for answers so they created stories about Jewish people poisoning wells to satisfy their need for a scapegoat. Germans killed Jewish communities in riots called pogroms to eliminate the non-existent threat, nurturing a culture of anti-Semitism that ultimately led to the Holocaust in the 20th century. A study in 2011 showed that villages where Black Death-era pogroms took place were more likely to demonstrate a violent hatred of Jews more than 600 years later. The Black Death helped the public at large to realize that humors weren't the cause of disease because so many people were getting violently ill and dying, the Greek concept of humors before bodily fluids that controlled an individual's health started to seem wildly unlikely. How were so many people experiencing this imbalance of fluids? Instead, the theory of contagion began to be widely accepted, slowly but surely. It wasn't until 1546 that the medical establishment in Europe embraced the theory of contagion. The theory prevailed until Robert Cook's germ theory of the late 1800s. Quarantine is a common term generally used to mean a period of time when the sick need to stay isolated from the healthy. But where does the term come from? Quarantine comes from the word quarantino, which is derived from the Italian word Quaranta, meaning 40. During the Black Death, the Italians devised a 40-day isolation period for the sick, likely inspired by biblical events that lasted 40 days, the Great Flood, Lent, etc. The concept of isolating the sick predates the Black Death, but the term quarantine originates from that time. It'd be a stretch to say that we would all still be speaking Latin if it wasn't for the Black Death, but historians do think that the plague hastened the dominance of the English language. The Black Death killed a disproportionate number of the clergy, meaning it killed a lot of men who were literate in Latin. Who replaced them? A lot of laymen, barely literate in Latin who also just so happened to be barely literate in English. Most people alive in England at the time of the Black Death were peasants. Following the Black Death, there were a whole lot fewer peasants left, meaning they could, in the words of one historian, be a lot more choosy about where they worked, and more expensive to procure. Those remaining peasants thus accumulated the wealth of those who died and were better off than before, leading ultimately to the rise of the middle class. The Black Death essentially gave peasants a lot more leverage in how they related to the upper classes. England would be a more genetically diverse place if it wasn't for the Black Death. That's right, England was actually more diverse in the 11th century prior to the plague than it is today. Random genetic drift is partially to blame, but population crashes like those that occurred after the Black Death are likely the main cause. One theory to help explain it is that England didn't quarantine the sick like the Italians did, for just one example, leading to less variable DNA sequences for the English. The Black Death is widely considered to have struck a blow against religion, considering how the clergy was just as susceptible as anyone else to the disease. Royalty was similarly impacted. Princess Joan of England, daughter of Edward III, was a victim. Clergymen killed by the plague were often replaced by less experienced and sometimes corrupt men, which further helped to weaken the Catholic Church's image. The great schism of the Church in the 14th century that ultimately led to the Protestant Reformation was aided by the Black Death and the chaos that followed. Prior to the Black Death, hospitals were focused more on offering hospitality than medical care. Like modern-day motels and hotels, hospitals at the time provided lodging and food for pilgrims as well as the poor. The medicalization of the medieval hospital can be traced to the 1330s and 1340s when more hospitals were founded in Florence, Italy than in any other time. During the Renaissance, hospitals became more specialized, with different wards for different types of illnesses. Thanks to the Black Plague. Coming up, of all the imagery that comes to mind when hearing the words bubonic plague, the most prevalent is most certainly that of the doctors and the odd bird-like masks that they would wear. Why they dressed that way is interesting, but what the doctors did while wearing those suits and in their labs as they tried to battle the illness is absolutely horrifying. And about 80 years after the Black Plague began, a different plague came upon England, a fatal one that would cause you to almost instantly perspire to death. These stories are up next when Weird Darkness returns. The town is standard, a small mid-western town where nothing ever happens. Quiet, peaceful, and tucked away among the cornfields and away from the dangers of the outside world. Unfortunately, there is nothing normal about standard. There has been an evil that has been awakened, and now the residents are slowly going crazy. Men for no reason are coming home and murdering their families, and dark forms are appearing in people's mirrors. The evil is spreading, and now it is up to ex-Chicago cop Robert Leto to find it. Time is running out, and the neighbors are becoming quiet shadows as they watch him. He doesn't have long before it will start to get into his mind, and then he himself would be making that deadly trip home. Inside the Mirrors by Jason R. Davis, narrated by Weird Darkness host Darren Marlar. Hear a free sample or purchase the title on the audiobooks page at WeirdDarkness.com. Treating the bubonic plague became a medical specialty during the first widespread outbreak of the disease in the 14th century. The Black Plague, as it is also known, has made a comeback from time to time, and during its second major assault on Western Europe, plague doctors adopted the famous robe, mask, and hat combo that one associates with the plague. Medical treatment for the bubonic plague by medieval doctors and their early modern counterparts didn't vary too much, but the plague doctor outfit of the 17th and 18th centuries did reflect a new approach to dealing with the disease. There were several types of doctors in the medieval world. Physicians were individuals who had received some sort of university training, while surgeons lacked a formal education and were therefore considered inferior. Surgeons were often associated with barbers who were allowed to let blood and pull teeth. Apothecaries were responsible for dispensing drugs or, during the Middle Ages, herbs, sweets, and perfumes. There were also knowledgeable women. All of the other doctors were men who were familiar with natural remedies and produced potions, salves, and tonics in their homes. Then, during the outbreak of the plague, a new type of doctor was developed. There were specific physicians who became known as plague doctors, specializing in preventing and treating the plague. They were hired by villages during the 14th century epidemic and throughout the next four centuries whenever the plague would pop back up. During the 17th century, plague doctors started wearing uniforms in an effort to protect themselves from their patients. Charles de la More came up with a concept of the long, dark robe worn with boots, gloves, and a hat in 1619. The idea was to keep the physician's entire body covered. The outer layer of the costume was made of goat leather and often coated in wax. Underneath, the doctor wore a blouse that tied to his boots. The infamous plague masks were actually associated with air purity. During the 17th and 18th centuries, the idea that the air could be polluted became widespread and doctors sought to prevent bad air or the miasma from getting to them. Eye holes were fitted with glass pieces so doctors could still see, and the long noses on the mask were filled with drugs and aromatic herbs, including mint, camphor, cloves, straw, laudanum, rose petals, and myrrh to filter the air. The herbs also helped with the smell, considering that the dead bodies and lanced boobos that doctors dealt with were rather pungent. However, despite rumors, ring around the rosy was most likely not about the plague. The canes that plague doctors carried served a few practical purposes. Doctors could use them to poke and prod a patient that was lying on the ground without having to touch them directly, and they may have been used to keep family members at bay or to protect themselves from desperate patients. It could also be used to communicate to their helpers where a body needed to go after a patient died. Wealth certainly offers greater access to healthcare, that hasn't changed much, but during the Middle Ages plague doctors were hired by towns and villages to treat everyone. Since the location was paying them, not the individual, all sick people were provided with the same medical care. For example, when Giovanni da Ventura served as a community plague doctor in Pavia in 1479, he received a monthly payment, a furnished house, local citizenship, and living expenses from the city. He didn't charge the patients, but could take payments from individuals if they offered. Medieval medicine was based around the idea that the human body had four humors that needed to be in balance. Blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile were to be balanced with the help of diet, herbs, natural medicines, and if things got too far out of whack, blood would be removed from the body entirely, hence bloodletting. In terms of plague treatments, doctors typically stuck with what they knew and tried to remove the toxic imbalance from the body by bloodletting their patients. They also lanced, rubbed toads on, or leached the buboes to try and remove the sickness. Sex was prohibited too, but well, that rarely stuck. Sometimes patients would be told to drink their own urine or consume medicines made from eggshells, marigolds, and treacle. Patients would also be rubbed with onion, garlic, butter, arsenic, or flower petal compounds or even be advised to rub animal parts on their body to try to eliminate the illness. Brogues, snakes, and pigeons were particularly popular if they were nearby. Once buboes were lanced, they were then often rubbed with a mixture of tree sap, flower petals, and human excrement. As a person near to death, they could even be coated in mercury and baked in an oven for a while. There were also techniques to induce diarrhea to try and drive out whatever evil had taken over the body. During the Middle Ages, the belief was that bad things happened because God was dissatisfied with humanity. This meant that people needed to make amends. As a result, self-flagellation became a common treatment for the plague. Individuals would whip themselves in order to atone for whatever sins had brought about the disease. In fact, there were entire groups of flagellants dedicated to the practice. But when a person couldn't whip themselves sufficiently or were already sick and too weak, they often asked the plague doctors to do it for them. When God throws down the scourge, the tendency is to try to find a reason and someone to blame. Christians tried to identify Jews as the cause of the disease, although Pope Clement VI issued a statement saying that it wasn't their fault. However, this did not stop people from looking for a scapegoat. Pope Clement VI even famously surrounded himself with fire to keep the evil of the plague from infecting him, but it was actually the heat itself that kept him safe, not the fire warding off evil spirits. While the plague doctor needed to be protected from head to toe, the hats themselves were actually used to indicate that a person was in fact a doctor. The hats were more symbolic than functional, though it is possible that the wide brim did manage to keep some bacteria away. One of the most beneficial contributions made by plague doctors was the sheer volume of detailed information they kept about their patients. Plague doctors kept registers of the number of victims for public record, documented people's last wishes and often testified for and witnessed wills being sorted. Their service to the public went beyond just medical care. The medieval period isn't really known for its medical advancements, but people at this time were often more informed than you'd think. In addition to the wide amount of information available on the plague, thanks to Jewish and Arab sources, bodies were often dissected in order to yield forensic and anatomical information. In the 13th century, the papacy banned the destruction of a body, but what that actually meant is still debated. Regardless, during the plague, plague doctors were tasked with autopsying bodies to determine the cause of death and try to understand the mysterious illness that was killing so many people so quickly. Plague doctors were necessarily separated from the rest of the population of a town or village where they were tending their patients. This was to protect the doctor, as well as the healthy citizens alike. Giovanni da Ventura, according to his contract, was only allowed to move about the city when he was accompanied by an escort, unless he was seeing patients. Most likely a very lonely man. After a period of serving as a plague doctor, the physician would then spend at least 40 days in isolation. However, generally speaking, plague doctors lived their lives under quarantine due more to social stigma than anything else. From 1485 through the latter part of the 16th century, a new plague, English Sweating Sickness, ravaged England and Europe, killing thousands of people. The fearsome disease had many names, including Pseudor Anglicus, English Sweat, The Sweat, The Swat, The New Acquaintance, and Stoop, Naive and Know Thy Master. The dreaded sweat which took its victims in fewer than 24 hours was more or less localized in England, but it made its way to the European continent in 1528. The symptoms of Sweating Sickness not only confused contemporary medical practitioners, but their cause also remains a mystery. And of course, like the dreaded Black Death, Sweating Sickness was terrifying, deadly and really, really unpleasant. At the Battle of Bosworth Field in August 1485, Thomas Lord Stanley pulled back his support for the Tudor cause on account of Sweating Sickness. Thought at the time to be more about Lord Stanley's shifting loyalties than an actual ailment, the disease was present six weeks later in London, perhaps thanks to Henry's victorious troops and their triumphant return to the city. Deaths from Sweating Sickness were reported in London in mid-September 1485 and records indicate it continued to kill through October. Thomas Forstier, a French doctor in London explained that the sickness cometh with great sweating and stinking with redness of the face and all of the body, and continual thirst with a great heat and headache because of the fumes and venoms. By the end of October 1485, English Sweating Sickness had killed 15,000 people in London. The populations most affected by Sweating Sickness were of higher social classes in England, another confusing aspect of the disease. London lost two Lord Mayors, three sheriffs and six aldermen in 1485 alone. There are also no accounts of young children suffering from English Sweating Sickness and it seems to have avoided the elderly as well, which is most uncommon for an epidemic. When Arthur, Prince of Wales died in 1502, it may have been from English Sweating Sickness and several members of Henry VIII's court took ill during the 16th century. The king was paranoid that he would get sick too. In 1529, one of the fills the chamber of Millie Bolin was attacked on Tuesday by the Sweating Sickness. The king left in great haste and went a dozen miles off. This disease is the easiest in the world to die of. Anne Boleyn mentioned this sweat in a letter to Thomas Wolsey after his bout with the disease as well. After its initial appearance in England 1485, Sweating Sickness showed up again in 1508. Some sources place it in 1506. It also came back in 1517, 1528 and 1551. The cause of the disease was unknown and still remains debated and each time the epidemic struck, it killed thousands of people. The worst bout with Sweating Sickness took place in 1528, which was also the same year that it jumped the English Channel. In 1528, English Sweating Sickness was transported to Germany by ship, leading to thousands of deaths. In Danzing alone, 3,000 people died. It spread to Scandinavia, Poland and parts of Russia, but it never went into France or Italy. At the time, doctors thought the disease was a form of influenza, but modern researchers now believe it may have been the Hottavirus. In 1718, a similar disease known as the Picardie Sweat appeared in the Picardie region of France. Historians continue to investigate whether or not they had the same cause. Each time Sweating Sickness appeared in England, there was public panic and fear that it was evil at play. John Kice, an English physician, wrote about the disease in 1552 and his account, a Boak or Council against the disease commonly called the Sweat or the Sweating Sickness, describes impure spirits in bodies and infection caused by evil mists and exhalations drawn out of the ground. Generally, in each of the years that Sweating Sickness appeared in England, it showed up during the spring, spread and killed through summer and faded during the fall. English Sweating Sickness struck suddenly and the first symptom was a sense of foreboding, an appropriate symptom really. Individuals then began to feel very cold and shiver, develop pain in their shoulders, backs, necks and head and of course, they would sweat. They also experienced nausea all during the first couple hours of the disease. After the first phase of the disease, the individuals transitioned to feeling very hot. They would be drenched in sweat, experienced delirium and have a rapid pulse. People also had stomach aches, heart pain and liver inflammation. John Kice points out this disease is not a sweat only, as it is thought and called, but a fever, one that a person would experience for the next 15 to 21 hours. He believed that the sweat itself was the only way to eliminate the disease and should be provoked with herbs and warm drinks. Affected individuals would also feel extreme fatigue, which if they succumbed to it could lead to a coma or death. As a result, he recommended keeping the sick person awake. After 24 hours, the symptoms would abate, but only if the individual survived. Kice recommended that after 24 hours, a person could put on warm clothes but was not to move around for two days. Unlike the Black Death, there was no immunity for individuals who survived sweating sickness. This meant it was possible to survive the disease only to get it again. The speed with which the disease killed received a lot of attention by observers. One witness described people dancing in the court at 9 o'clock that were dead by 11 o'clock. Charles and Henry Brandon, sons of the Duke of Suffolk, were tutored with Henry VIII's son Edward, later Edward VI, and they went to study at Cambridge University together. Their father had been married to Henry VIII's daughter Mary for a time, which gave the entire family an elevated status at the royal court. When the two teenagers went to Cambridge, they distinguished themselves as scholars, but both fell ill with the sweating sickness in 1551. Charles and Henry died on the same day at ages 13 or 14 and age 16, respectively. When sweating sickness came back in 1508 and 1517, England again experienced thousands of deaths, mostly in London. In 1551, it was localized to Devon and Exeter in the east, and in the 1570s, there were cases of the disease in Colchester. Despite a lack of understanding in how to prevent sweating sickness and its highly contagious nature, the disease slowly disappeared from England after 1551. Other diseases, such as the Picardy sweat in the 18th century, mimicked symptoms of the English sweating sickness, but nothing has ever completely duplicated it. Up next. While most everyone is familiar with the plague in Europe in the early 1400s, in the early 1900s, it struck again, this time in San Francisco. Now, if you've not heard of that before, it could be because the U.S. government tried to cover it up. And it probably comes as no surprise that something so deadly and horrific as the Black Plague would leave behind some residual paranormal energy. And boy is there a lot of it. These stories and more when Weird Darkness returns. The Lord of the Elements wants to change reality. He's enlisted the evil Zeltan to help him and together they'll try to recruit Stanley, a man gifted with incredible imaginative capabilities to help them. Unless Edward and his friends can stop them, that is. A tale of white and black magic, quantum physics and a plot that twists and turns. If you like science fiction, fantasy and horror, you'll love The Last Observer, a magic battle for reality by G. Michael Vasey, narrated by Weird Darkness host Darren Marlar. Here a free sample of The Last Observer on the audiobooks page at WeirdDarkness.com. The late Middle Ages weren't the only years the Black Plague terrorized humanity. 500 years later it would strike again, this time in the New World. The San Francisco Bubonic Plague outbreak was one of the biggest health crises and controversies of the 20th century United States. The plague was a disease that most people thought had disappeared with the medieval period, but when it resurfaced, it became one of the worst epidemics in U.S. history. The state of California was forced to contend with an illness not yet entirely understood as government officials and the press actively covered it up. Not only did they have to pioneer treatments for the Bubonic Plague, but the entire problem was also wrapped up in anti-immigrant and specifically anti-Chinese racism. Some people even referred to it as the San Francisco Chinatown Plague, implying a problem specific to the Chinese residents of the city. But that wasn't the case. Blaming a select group of people meant that the cause itself, flea-infested rats carrying the same strain of plague causing deaths in China, went unaddressed. The San Francisco Plague death toll rose, taking the lives of many of the city's underprivileged residents. It wasn't until a second plague swept the city, this time primarily affecting San Francisco's white population and spreading to further areas of the U.S. that the root cause was identified and put to rest. While modern-day humanity still deals with tragedy incurred by the flu, the plague of the early 1900s incited racist tension and social horror simply because of the ignorance of its causes and the inexplicable death it left in its wake. Though the San Francisco Plague was hardly the first major illness the residents of the continental U.S. had to address, it was the first major outbreak of the plague. The illness, named the Black Plague or the Black Death when it ravaged Europe in the 1300s and caused some 50 million deaths there, made it come back in the 1800s, seriously affecting China and much of East Asia. Because of global trade and increasing numbers of people emigrating and immigrating worldwide, it was only a matter of time before epidemics began to spread. However, people did not yet understand exactly how the disease was transmitted. Many believed it spread through open wounds, food or the miasma theory which claimed that diseases like the plague spread through bad air. Because of these conflicting, erroneous theories, the world wasn't prepared to respond to a wide-scale epidemic. The first person to die in the San Francisco plague was Wangchuk King, a lumber salesman and Chinese immigrant who was found unconscious in the flop house where he lived after suffering an intense fever. In a morbidly preemptive move, he was brought to a nearby coffin shop where he died. Examination of his body revealed swollen lymph nodes, called buboes, hence the disease's name, consistent with the plague infection, as well as an insect bite. Flee transmission was not yet a popular theory to explain plague infection so while it was noted, the report did nothing to quell the subsequently rampant xenophobic explanations for the disease. When microscopic investigation revealed plague bacteria in Wangchuk King's blood, Chinatown was quarantined to stop the spread, though the fleas and rats that carried the disease were not hindered by arbitrary barriers. San Francisco's plague outbreak was concentrated in the Chinatown district, just a few blocks from what is now the port of San Francisco. Because Chinatown was particularly overpopulated, had poor sanitation and had many people living in poor conditions, those features were blamed for the outbreak, rather than the actual cause, flea-ridden rats brought from plague-stricken China on the ships that came to the harbor. Instead of treating the cause, the city quarantined its Chinese residents. But quarantines don't stop, rats, and the disease continued to spread outside of the quarantined zones. Because conditions were poor and racism was rampant, the quarantined residents didn't get proper medical treatment. Thus, the concentration of infected people, fleas, and rats could grow, lending to even more infections. In the late 1800s and early 1900s, scientists and medical professionals weren't yet sure what caused the plague. The miasma theory, which suggested the disease was spread through bad air, was popular, as were suggestions that the plague might travel through contaminated food or open wounds. The bubonic plague is actually transmitted via flea-bite, with the carrier fleas often living on rats. China was dealing with a plague outbreak of its own in the mid-to-late 1850s, which soon made its way to Hong Kong. Since Chinese immigrants and imports commonly made the journey to San Francisco, it was only a matter of time before the plague reached American soil. The plague itself was a problem, but anti-immigrant sentiment and racism against Chinese people exacerbated the issue. Around this same time, the Chinese Exclusion Act, which prevented Chinese people who were not merchants from immigrating to the US, was extended. Rampant, unfounded anti-Chinese sentiment promoted racist policy, which in turn validated racist viewpoints because of state-sanctioned rules. In the initial quarantine, white people in Chinatown were told to leave while Chinese residents were forced to stay. Miasma theory, which posited the disease was spread via contact with contaminated air, was blamed for the plague in Chinatown. Rather than the poor sanitation being a symptom of the area's poverty, it was instead said to be evidence that the Chinese people themselves were the problem. Some went so far as to claim that a rice-based diet made them susceptible to the plague. One of the biggest stumbling blocks to stopping the plague's initial four-year hold on San Francisco was the city government. The governor, Henry Gage, actively denied the city had a problem, fearing it would hurt tourism and trade. Worse, he didn't just deny the problem, he actively thwarted efforts to stop it. Gage claimed funds were being diverted to stop a plague that didn't exist. He also suggested Dr. Joseph J. Kinian, who led the quarantine effort, had fabricated or caused the plague himself by injecting Chinese residents with the disease. Though there was little available help for victims, Gage's denial, as well as its active attempts to stoke tension between Kinian's efforts and Chinese people whose civil rights were being violated, ensured the plague continued to ravage the city's ostracized citizens. Dr. Joseph J. Kinian was the leader of the plague eradication movement, but due to both concentrated misinformation efforts and lack of scientific information, his plans to stop the plague were thwarted. Kinian was unsure how to curtail the plague's spread and he ineffectively quarantined Chinatown in the hopes that it would keep the infection isolated. When animals were infected with the disease and didn't immediately die, the quarantine was lifted and the city government, particularly Governor Henry Gage, seized on it as proof that Kinian had no idea what he was doing. He warned that shipments of goods could spread the illness out of San Francisco and around the country, leading to other states refusing to accept goods from California. Gage responded to the lost profits by claiming Kinian himself had created the plague by injecting Chinese corpses. Furthermore, he stoked the flames of the poor treatment Chinese people were receiving by encouraging them to fight back. Combined with Kinian's reportedly uptight demeanor, which did not mesh well with the Chinese population he was meant to be helping, his efforts were undercut and he was eventually transferred. The plague raged on until Dr. Rupert Blue replaced Kinian and shifted the treatment from quarantine to pest eradication. Governor Gage's actions were not without consequences. Anti-Chinese sentiment, along with the tensions that arose from the quarantine and Gage's efforts to create a divide between health officials and Chinese residents most threatened by the outbreak, meant that people hid the diseased bodies of plague victims, furthering the infectious spread. People continued to get sick and die and not just in Chinatown. Though the disease was concentrated in the slums, it wasn't thwarted by barbed wire quarantines. As it became increasingly clear that the illness was real, the citizens of San Francisco realized Gage's denial and shifting of the blame to Dr. Joseph Kinian were actively hurting people. The state's conservative party refused his nomination and Gage left office in 1903. He continued to blame Kinian for the barring of California goods in other states and the subsequent economic hardship. The next governor, George Party, shared Gage's concerns regarding public address of the situation but immediately took ownership of the situation. He removed health officials from the case and worked privately to provide medical attention, research and eradication of the plague. Because the plague was not well understood, many of the treatments San Francisco health officials initially used to combat the illness actually made things worse. The quarantine, the first line of defense when the plague's initial victim was found, concentrated the Chinese-American population in an area with poor sanitation and did nothing for the actual cause of the plague, the rats that were drawn there precisely because of the poor sanitation. The city also used carbolic acid in an attempt to rid the air of the alleged miasma, which drove rats out of sewers and into the streets carrying their plague-riddled fleas with them. In addition, because relations between the Chinese people of San Francisco and the health officials were so poor, people in Chinatown started hiding the bodies of the deceased. Without proper disposal, the health crisis worsened. Nobody knew that the disease was mostly transmitted through flea bites, thus nobody was doing anything to stop the spread. All of these factors combined to make the plague even worse. The first plague outbreak occurred from 1900 to 1904, but it wasn't the last to affect San Francisco in the early 1900s. A second outbreak occurred in 1906, following the enormous San Francisco earthquake which killed some 3,000 people and displaced a quarter million more. But people weren't the only ones displaced. As humans fled their damaged homes, so did infected rats. As they spread, the chaos of the post-earthquake city and the concentration of people in refugee camps meant that the illness was allowed to spread once again. This outbreak was even stronger than the first, but it was more quickly contained thanks to scientific advancements between 1904 and 1906. While the second outbreak of plague hit San Francisco just two short years after the first one, it was handled much more quickly. Scientific advancements meant people better understood the plague's transmission and instead of quarantining infected people, Dr. Joseph Kenyon's replacement, Dr. Rupert Blue, targeted the rats. They were rounded up in great rat catching efforts thanks to financial bounties which ultimately prevented some of the spread and allowed scientists to test and kill infected rats. Not only was the threat identified before the plague's second time around, but the city government also could no longer scapegoat the Chinese residents of the city. All the victims of the second plague were white. Though anti-Chinese sentiment was still prominent, the blame couldn't be shifted. It wasn't miasma, diet, or any xenophobic cause which meant it had to be dealt with scientifically and medically. 119 people died during the San Francisco Plague outbreak. Many of them in the concentrated quarantined region of Chinatown. Without access to health professionals and pest control, infected victims spread the plague inadvertently but rapidly. Although it's certainly a deadly disease, the city's failure to isolate the actual cause and treat infected people ensured its spread and ability to affect more people. Though it's not the absolute deadliest outbreak in U.S. history, the introduction of smallpox by European settlers killed almost all indigenous people in what's now North America, for example. The San Francisco plague is one that could have been prevented or had its harm minimized if those in authority had taken action. Instead, it was allowed to fester in the city's most impoverished communities, sowing further anti-Chinese sentiment. The plague resurfaced in China on the backs of rats in the 1850s and wound up in Hong Kong. Chinese immigrants and imports often passed this way and route to San Francisco via port stopovers in Hawaii. Following one-ships stop in Hawaii in 1899, a case of the plague broke out in the Honolulu Chinatown, spreading quickly to four more people. In an attempt to contain the plague and eradicate the conditions fostering its rapid spread, the Hawaii Board of Health isolated the victims and quarantined 14 blocks of the area complete with military guards. According to historical record, to clean contaminated areas, the board set 41 controlled fires, cleaned and disinfected buildings, burned garbage, filled old cesspools and dug new ones. However, when this failed to quell the problem and new cases of the plague arose, the board set another fire which quickly spun out of control and resulted in all of Honolulu Chinatown burning to the ground. The problematic ships nonetheless continued to San Francisco where, because people on the ships did not show plague symptoms, they were allowed to dock, along with humans also disembarked infected rats, carrying the disease straight into the port city. The oozing sores, the black spots, the staggeringly high death toll. Any paranormal enthusiasts will tell you that trauma causes spirits to linger on earth after death and few episodes in history were as traumatic as the years of the Black Death. The horrific disease swept through Asia and Europe in the 14th century, healing as many as 200 million people along the way. It is no wonder that Black Plague ghost stories are still shared in hushed whispers. Any brave souls seeking haunted Black Plague locations don't have to look far. Churches, tunnels and even entire towns where people perished are rumored to bear the paranormal mark of the disease. And the spirits themselves aren't exactly secretive. Ghosts from the Black Death often appear frightened, weeping and wailing. Visitors to notorious Black Plague sites like the island of Poveglia report how they can feel the trauma of the past. Black Plague ghost stories are a tragic reminder of a dark time when millions of people met a painful, untimely demise. The British city of York has been called one of the most haunted cities in Europe, and it's no stranger to tales of Black Plague ghosts. According to one tale, a family moved into a house and began to hear crying in the hallways. They couldn't locate the source, but the sound filled them with feelings of sadness and regret. Later, they learned a little girl had died in the house. After her parents died at the plague, villagers feared she had become infected. In truth, she was healthy, but that didn't stop the masses from locking her up with her parents' corpses. The girl slowly starved to death, alone, and seemingly continues to weep for her tragic fate today. As mentioned earlier, Poveglia is an island in northern Italy that once served as the final destination for victims of the Black Plague. During the outbreak, sufferers were hastily transferred to the island to prevent the disease from spreading. While it's unclear how many people perished on Poveglia, the top soil is rumored to be 50% human ash. Visitors to Poveglia have come back with some chilling tales. People have described feeling the overwhelming sense of being watched as soon as they step foot on the island. They also claim to have felt invisible hands scratching them and say that they have been pushed into walls by unseen entities. Needless to say, a visit to Poveglia is not for the easily frightened. Italy's Poveglia Island is no longer open to the public, but that doesn't stop curious tourists from sneaking onto the former destination for plague sufferers. In 2016, five Colorado tourists got onto the island, only to be rescued later by Italian firefighters. The tourists were apparently so tormented by spirits that they began screaming desperately for help. There have been several attempts over the years to rebuild on the island. Recently, a construction crew was sent to restore an old hospital on the island, but the crew abruptly abandoned the job without explanation. While no one will say what happened, many speculate the workers were driven out by spirits. The island was once a dumping ground for plague victims, but even after that gruesome practice ended, the dark history of Poveglia was not over. The public health office began using the island as a place to house the mentally ill in the 1920s. Patients were kept in inhumane conditions and were subjected to unauthorized and often unethical medical testing. They also reported seeing ghosts and hearing unexplained wailing. According to local legend, one particularly twisted doctor used these ghost sightings as a justification to perform grizzly lobotomies on his patients. In one small glimmer of justice, though, vengeful spirits allegedly harassed the doctor until he was driven to throw himself off a building. The asylum was closed in 1968. A tunnel running between London's districts of Nightbridge and South Kensington weaves past the mass grave of 17th-century plague victims. Needless to say, this is a prime location for ghost hunters. In June of 2016, a man caught what appears to be a ghostly apparition on camera, leaning over the tracks near the Nightbridge station. While this could simply be a trick of the light, believers consider this evidence that victims of the plague remain near their final resting place. In a church in Nolltown, England, a host of recurring black plague ghosts have been reported. A ghostly face often appears in a tower window, and some have seen a weeping nun kneeling outside the church. But the most unusual spirits might be that of a horse and rider. The pair gallops across the church grounds in the dead of night, and straight through the church's walls, as if it isn't even there. In a church in Norwich, England, built over a mass grave of plague victims, 34-year-old Jodie Carmen caught an eerie sight on her camera. The paranormal enthusiast took a photograph just after midnight one night in 2015, when she and her companions heard bumping and knocking near the front of the church. The snapshot revealed the spectral outline of a figure seated in one of the pews. According to a tale shared on Ghost Stories Online, a young Italian woman participated in an overnight ghost hunt on Poveglia Island. She did not notice anything unusual and left somewhat disappointed. However, when examining pictures from her trip, a friend noticed something odd. In one photo of an abandoned building, she spotted what looked like a phantom head and hands resting on a bed near the window. When a mother and her child were visiting an abandoned church in Old Town, England, they were approached by a dark figure in broad daylight. After walking across their path, the figure promptly vanished. Other visitors have seen the figure, but only late at night and describe it as having a truly menacing aura. Could this presence be a manifestation of the Black Death itself? Scandinavian ghost stories tell of an eerie figure, Pesta, the personification of the Black Death itself. This hideous, shriveled figure appears at houses touched by the disease. If she carries a rake, some family members may survive. If she carries a broom, all inhabitants in the home will die. When Weird Darkness returns, Europe just could not escape plagues of any kind. For example, the plague that made you against your will keep dancing until you dropped dead. That story is up next. Remember staying up late on a Friday or Saturday night, either at home or at a friend's house, and watching your local TV stations' horror host presenting a terrible B-movie with aliens, monsters, ghosts, alien monster ghosts, vampires, werewolves, and all other kinds of crazy, creepy characters? Those were fun nights, weren't they? Well, that's what the Weird Watch Party page at WeirdDarkness.com has to offer, all day, every day. Thanks to our friends at the Monster Channel, you can visit WeirdDarkness.com slash Watch Party right after listening to this episode and immediately be entertained by a horror host and horrible movie, or should I say horror-a-bull movie. And not only can you watch the B-movies and horror hosts streaming there 24-7, but once a month we all gather together to watch a movie and talk about it in the chat room on that same page. Get your frights and funnies on the Weirdo Watch Party page at WeirdDarkness.com. Medieval Europe had no shortage of diseases, from the black plague that killed millions, to the bizarre medieval sweating sickness that could kill within hours. But one of the strangest diseases in history has to be the dancing sickness. Afflicted people would dance uncontrollably for days at a time and sometimes until they fell over dead. In the dancing plague of 1518, 400 people danced in the streets of Strasburg for months as the city tried all sorts of cures for the afflicted dancers. When hiring musicians to burn out the dancing didn't work, the city tried banning dancing completely and kicked out all the prostitutes and gamblers. One physician even blamed rebellious women for the outbreak. How did Strasburg finally end the outbreak of dancing mass hysteria? In a strange turn of events, the cure involved red shoes. The bizarre history of Strasburg's dancing plague is baffling. Dancing mania has to rank among the strangest cases of mass hysteria in history as people were literally dancing to death. It all started with Frautrofia. One day in July of 1518, she stepped outside her small home in Strasburg and started to dance. And she didn't stop. Frautrofia danced all day, much to the annoyance of her husband only collapsing at night for a few hours of restless sleep. But as soon as the sun rose the next day, Trafia was back on her feet dancing. A crowd gathered around the dancing woman who swayed to the sound of silence ignoring everything around her. She danced even though her feet were bloody and bruised as if she couldn't stop. What made Frautrofia dance and why couldn't she stop? Within days at least 30 other dancers had joined her and it was just the beginning of the strangest plague to strike medieval Europe. The dancing mania as it became known soon spread to even more people in Strasburg. Chronicler Daniel Specklin reported that there were more than a hundred dancing at the same time while another put the total at closer to 400. The epidemic quickly became a crisis for the city and the city council had no idea how to stop the dancing. Only one thing was clear. The dancers were not happy. They arrived in pain. They begged for mercy and they screamed for help. As summer stretched on the dancing epidemic started to claim lives. One chronicle reported that during the heat of the summer as many as 15 people died every day from dancing. The city council was baffled by the outbreak of dancing. They turned to local physicians to help diagnose the problem. After excluding astrological causes and supernatural curses, the physicians declared that the dancers simply suffered from hot blood, a problem with the balance of their humors. As the classical medical authority Galen had described, hot blood could overheat the brain and cause madness. Bloodletting was the obvious answer since removing hot blood would help the dancers, but their manic dancing made it impossible. So instead the city prescribed more dancing. They hired musicians to play rousing music in the hopes that they could burn out the dancing. A chronicle report said that the city paid people to stay with the dancers while musicians played by fife and drum. But the cure failed. All of this helped not at all. In fact, the hired musicians only made things worse. Whenever the afflicted dancers stumbled or slowed, the musicians played even faster, hoping to burn out the madness. One eyewitness lamented, they danced day and night with those poor people. Soon dancers began dying in even greater numbers and worse. The party atmosphere attracted new dancers. Like a contagion, the dancing plague spread through Strasbourg. The city council began to rethink their plan to burn out the dancing by setting up a huge party in the middle of the city. Maybe the dancers did not have hot blood after all. Maybe the dance was a curse, a warning to reform morals in Strasbourg or suffer an even worse fate. If the dancing mania was a curse, the city council knew what had to happen next. They had to crack down on sin in Strasbourg. To start with, the council closed the gambling houses and the brothels. Everyone knew that gaming and prostitution angered the saints, who might have sent the dancing plague to punish Strasbourg. Then the city rounded up all the loose persons and banished them from the city. In addition to the crackdown on sin, the city also tried to placate the saints by donating a hundred-pound candle to the cathedral, but even the candle couldn't stop the dancing plague. By August, the dancing plague showed no signs of stopping, so the city took a drastic step. They banned dancing and ordered a fine of 30 shillings for anyone caught dancing. In addition, the city banned music, with an exception of stringed instruments at weddings. But they are on their conscience not to use tambourines and drums, the municipal archive reported. Drums were the most dangerous instrument because they triggered the convulsions of the strange epidemic. In spite of the dance party to cool people's blood, the hundred-pound candle and the fine now on dancing, the dancing mania continued. As terrifying as the outbreak of dancing mania in Strasbourg seemed, it was not the first time that the strange illness had tormented Europe. In 1374, an outbreak struck the city of Aachen and quickly spread across the Rhine Valley. In that outbreak, dancers formed circles hand in hand, dancing for hours together in wild delirium until at length they fell to the ground in a state of exhaustion. But the cause of the dancing mania seemed clearer in 1374, in part because the dancers diagnosed themselves with demonic possession. As they danced, the afflicted cried out that they had been cursed by a demon who tormented them with non-stop dancing. Ettrusists tossed the dancers in the baths of holy water to cure the disease and shouted incantations in the faces of the possessed. In 1526, nearly 10 years after the outbreak of dancing mania had died down in Strasbourg, the Renaissance physician Paracelsus visited the town to diagnose the cause of dancing mania. According to Paracelsus, forced natural dancing was an involuntary physical response, much like a reflex that could be caused if certain parts of the body were manipulated. The mania, Paracelsus claimed, had a clear, natural cause. But in addition to this physical explanation, Paracelsus also scrutinized the role of Frautrovia, the woman who had set off the entire dancing mania to start with. Paracelsus saw the housewife as a rebellious woman, claiming that right before she started dancing, her husband had asked something of her which she did not want to do. The dance, according to Paracelsus, was nothing more than a bitter woman's attempt to disrespect her husband. As the dancing mania continued to plague Strasbourg in 1518, the city devised a new cure. They turned to St. Vitus, a martyr from the Roman era to help the dancers. St. Vitus had been martyred in 303 on order of the Emperor's Diocletian and Maximilian while he was still a child. His tormentors tossed him into a cauldron of boiling lead and tar and then threw him to a hungry lion. According to the legend, Vitus emerged unharmed from the cauldron and the lion merely licked his hands. After death, Vitus ascended to paradise and became a saint. St. Vitus had a reputation for healing illnesses, especially ones related to trembling limbs or lameness. Strasbourg hoped that these qualifications made St. Vitus the patron saint of dance. Near the end of the summer, as the dancing mania continued, the city took a drastic step. A chronicler described the cure. They sent many on wagons to St. Vitus, a shrine at the top of a mountain. The dancers continued to fall down in front of the altar so the priests set mass over them and they were given a little cross and red shoes on which the sign of the cross had been made in holy oil, on both the tops and the soles. The red shoes did the trick. The dancing epidemic slowly came to an end and most of the dancers regained control of their bodies. The strange ailment started to be called St. Vitus' dance, either because the saint had cured the dancers or because he was responsible for the original curse. Modern experts still can't agree what exactly caused the outbreak of dancing mania that struck Strasbourg in 1518. Some have suggested air got poisoning, which can cause convulsions. However, it cannot explain the coordinated movements that lasted for days. Others have tried to connect the disease with epilepsy or other medical conditions, but these explanations cannot account for the seemingly contagious nature of the dancing illness. Another theory suggests that the dancers were secret members of a heretical cult that emerged every decade to dance and revel in public. This explanation also fails to explain the plague because the dancers were clearly in agony and many died. And at a time when Europe was on high alert for heretics, no one suggested the dancing victims might be heretics. Strasbourg was in the middle of a crisis in 1518. The city had experienced serious famines in 1492, 1502, and 1511. In 1516, food prices skyrocketed, and in 1517, another famine killed countless people. One chronicler dubbed it the bad year. Smallpox and leprosy surged in 1518 and the orphanage overflowed with at least 300 new orphans. In short, 1518 was a terrible time, even by the standards of the medieval period. Under such distress, mass hysteria flourished. People feared that their community was being cursed by supernatural forces, and the fear of possession drove people mad. Superstitious beliefs had the power to grab control of the mind and convince people that they were victims of powers beyond their control. Even the cure backs up this theory of dancing mania. The dancers believed that St. Vitus could stop the dancing, and thus the visit to the shrine plus the red shoes actually did end their torment. The mass hysteria theory explains both the spread of the disease and its conclusion, as well as why it struck Strasbourg in 1518. In the end, the strange dancing plague shows the power that the mind can have over the body. Thanks for listening. If you like the show, please share it with someone you know who loves the paranormal or strange stories, true crime, monsters, or unsolved mysteries like you do. And please leave a rating and review of the show and the podcast app you listen from. Doing so helps the show to get noticed. You can also email me anytime with your questions or comments through the website at WeirdDarkness.com. That's also where you can find all of my social media, listen to free audiobooks that I've narrated, shop the Weird Darkness store, sign up for the email newsletter to win monthly prizes, find other podcasts that I host, and find the Hope in the Darkness page if you or someone you know is struggling with depression or dark thoughts. Plus, if you have a true paranormal or creepy tale to tell, you can click on Tell Your Story. All stories in Weird Darkness are purported to be true unless stated otherwise, and you can find source links or links to the authors in the show notes. Inside Black Plague Island was written by Cheryl Adams Rickoff. Plague Doctors, Death by Sweat and the Dance of Death were written by Melissa Satori. The Plague of San Francisco is by Melissa Brinks. Living with the Black Death was written by Genevieve Carlton and Kellan Perry. And A Plague of Ghosts was written by Aaron Wisty. Again, you can find links to these stories in the show notes. Weird Darkness is a production and trademark of Marlar House Productions. Copyright Weird Darkness. And now that we're coming out of the dark, I'll leave you with a little light. Ephesians 4 verse 2. Be completely humble and gentle. Be patient, bearing with one another in love. And a final thought from Aiva Orsano. The person I am today would like to thank the person I was five years ago for not giving up. I'm Darren Marlar. Thanks for joining me in the Weird Darkness.