Explain the negative aspects of life during the Middle Ages
Answers
Torture was used in the medieval period as a way to extract confessions and punish criminals (sometimes prior to execution).
The Black Death, one of the most destructive pandemics in human history, came to Europe in the mid-1340s. It is thought that the disease – a bacterial infection often referred to as the “bubonic plague” – came to Europe via merchant ships travelling from Asia. The disease was carried by fleas who rode on the rats that commonly infested ships. In the space of a few years, the Black Death killed more than 20 million people in Europe – nearly one third of the continent’s total population.
If you were unlucky enough to get the plague or any other illness during the medieval period, doctors were not much help, and in many cases only made things worse.
Europe was affected by a major famine between 1315 and 1317, though the effects lasted for nearly a decade afterward. The springs of 1315 and 1316 were unusually wet, resulting in much smaller harvests that normal. Many people starved to death or died of illnesses due to weakened immune systems caused by hunger. Millions of people – 10 to 15 percent of the total population – died from hunger or disease; there are even reports that many resorted to cannibalism, though these may be apocryphal.