In Herlihy first essay the “ Bubonic Plague…”he questions if the Black Death was even a plague. He goes back and does his research and notes the medieval chroniclers failed to mention the mass deaths of rats and other rodents, a necessary forerunner to the plague - epizootics, also didn't mention certain characteristic that aren't typically seen in a plague. His theory about the plague was that the “plague was just combinations of several diseases; “sometimes [they] worked together to produce the staggering mortalities”; the Black Death being a mixture of the bubonic plague, Anthrax and tuberculosis. Anthrax produce the characteristic of swellings ; tuberculosis symptoms being the presence of of skin lesions over long periods of time, the
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Malthusian people were feeling pressures on their food supply, which was very apparent during pre-plague Europe. A large amount of the population struggled to live on minimal resources and were well under the poverty level. In 1348 Europe was overpopulated even late into the century, until the plague occurred, which is when the population plummet down until the fifthtenth centruy and didn't really start growing for another fifty years . “These movements of deep decline, long stability, and slow recovery are inexplicable, on the assumption that resources and their availability alone dominate demographic cycles.” The results of the growth of the european population during the middle of the middle ages, Herlihy considers to be apart of the Malthusian deadlock. Herlihys second essay “ The New Economic and Demographic System” provides a more detailed economic explanation of the thesis claiming that pre-plague Europe was so filled with people that all the available capital was being used to keep society afloat thanks to population growth . By wiping out a large share of the population, the Black Death freed natural resources and other capital to the beginning of the industrial revolution with the making of new technology. Herlihy also brings up that a post-plague shortage of workers drove the invention and spread of labor-saving
Malthusian people were feeling pressures on their food supply, which was very apparent during pre-plague Europe. A large amount of the population struggled to live on minimal resources and were well under the poverty level. In 1348 Europe was overpopulated even late into the century, until the plague occurred, which is when the population plummet down until the fifthtenth centruy and didn't really start growing for another fifty years . “These movements of deep decline, long stability, and slow recovery are inexplicable, on the assumption that resources and their availability alone dominate demographic cycles.” The results of the growth of the european population during the middle of the middle ages, Herlihy considers to be apart of the Malthusian deadlock. Herlihys second essay “ The New Economic and Demographic System” provides a more detailed economic explanation of the thesis claiming that pre-plague Europe was so filled with people that all the available capital was being used to keep society afloat thanks to population growth . By wiping out a large share of the population, the Black Death freed natural resources and other capital to the beginning of the industrial revolution with the making of new technology. Herlihy also brings up that a post-plague shortage of workers drove the invention and spread of labor-saving