What was the role of superstition of the plague?

Question

The Black Death

Answer 1

Superstition, ignorance and fear played a great role in RESPONSE to the Black Death. And in a sense it also helped spread the disease.

In Europe, fearful people unable to explain or fight the plague attacked anyone they thought was the cause of the disease. At that time, people lacked understanding of germs, of what today people call "disease vectors" (the means of distributing a virus or bacterial infection0), and even of ways to effectively limit or prevent disease. To them, the plague was a curse brought by sinfulness and religious error.

As a result, people of a community who were different - perhaps disfigured by a birth defect, or who held unusual opinons, or sometimes were just plain smart - became targets for the fear and anger of the community. Jews were especially targeted in this way. The church at the time taught that all Jews were guilty of killing Christ. Many thousands of poor souls were tortured, beaten, and burned alive by crazed people terrified by the disease.

superstition also helped spread the illness. People feared to bathe, to take actions that would make their communities cleaner and less open to disease. Their habits of huddling together in tight communities out of fear of night demons and their filthy habits of waste disposal created a perfect environment to invite rats, mice and the fleas on them infected with plague.

Answer 2

Superstition called the Black Death (Bubonic Plague) to spread more quickly. People believed the superstitious causes rather than the facts (which was beyond their level of understanding).

Many innocent people died because others thought they "caused" the black plague. Innocent women thought to be witches were hanged. In the city of Strassburg, over two thousand Jews are said to have been hanged on a scaffold set up in the Jewish burial ground".

Medieval people thought the black death was carried through travvellers and merchants so they killed strangers. They thought it was a punishment from God. They thought it was caused by bad smells. At one time they thought it was carried by cats! We now know it was carried by rats and so because the medeval people thought it was carried by cats, they killed them, and then there weren't as many cats to kill the rats!

Answer 3

The people were so terrified The Pope would fall victim to the plague that they surrounded him with sweet smelling fogs and fumes, a lot of steam too.
They believed that a big part of the world's problems were from vile humors or bad smells.
Turns out it HAD protected the Pope. The heat from the steam killed the fleas and protected him.
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Answer 4

the Khan of the steppe kept the horses out of the camps because some roaming bedouin said horses were unlucky - and then came the death-carrying fleas...

Answer 5

It Wasn't a superstition. Check history channel .com GEEZ it's call history.