- Epidemics continue to affect modern civilization.Oli Scarff/Getty Images News/Getty Images
An epidemic is a term used to describe a highly contagious disease that affects widespread regions and locations. People who live in densely populated areas are at a greater risk for contracting a deadly disease. People who travel are also at a greater risk, not only coming into contact with a foreign disease, but transporting the disease to various locations. Modern epidemics, such as Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, spread quickly and affect the global community due to airplane travel. In modern times, it is extremely difficult to contain a disease to specific location or region, thus creating pandemics. Throughout history, people living in cities, travelers and merchants were at a greater risk of exposure to epidemics, such as plagues. - Some people believed penitence and flogging would prevent affliction.Photos.com/Photos.com/Getty Images
Between 1347 and 1350, the black death claimed one-third of the European population in two years, but the death toll wasn't evenly distributed. The plague affected city dwellers living in close proximity to a greater extent than rural dwellers. Merchants carried the disease from one location to another. For instance, in the city of Venice, a major center of commerce and trade, 60 percent of the population died within 18 months; approximately five to six hundred people died each day during the height of the plague. Historical records in London, England, state that private land owners donated land for burial purposes. Current excavations support historical accounts by unearthing bodies placed five deep in mass graves. - Plagues necessitate mass burials.Photos.com/Photos.com/Getty Images
Cultural customs and legal mandates govern corpse removal and burial procedures. In the U.S. alone, there are enough bodies to fill two square miles of land each year, yet the public doesn't witness exposed bodies awaiting burial. Funeral practices during Medieval Europe showed respect and reverence for the dead as well; shrouds and coffins veiled the dead from public view. The deceased received a Christian burial, whether wealthy or poor, upstanding citizen or prisoner. The sight of transporting piles of bodies and laying the bodies in mass graves was as shocking then as it would be now. - The London plague of 1665 is well-documented in artwork and literature.Photos.com/Photos.com/Getty Images
A death cart was a horse-drawn cart used to transport corpses to burial locations. A hearse is the modern equivalent of a death cart. It is unclear whether an ordinary cart transported the dead or if a system of death carts ever existed. The term death cart may have evolved during times of plague outbreaks to depict an emotional image of the removal of an overwhelming number of bodies. Prominent 17th-century English author William DeFoe wrote about death carts in "A Journal of the Plague Year," an account of the London plague of 1665. Please refer to the resource section for visual images of death carts.
