What It Was Like to Be a Body Collector During the Black Plague

Buboes, black spots, and bloody froth: it was all in a day’s work for Black Death body collectors. The plague, which may have killed as many as 200 million people worldwide, changed everything—including body disposal.

During the plague, millions of bodies piled up in Europe. Bubonic plague body collectors risked their lives to clear out the streets, all for a hefty paycheck—and sometimes the chance to extort people out of their money.

#BlackDeath #BubonicPlague #WeirdHistory

[dwrussell]

I do mortuary transport for a living. I can't stand doing house calls where the person is decomposed. I couldn't imagine doing it 700 years ago with the sheer amount of disgusting bodies to pick up, but also without body bags, latex gloves, or any type of protective gear. These dudes are chads.

[janehallowell]

My husband and I have a one hour commute every morning and listen to a few episodes each day. We absolutely adore Wierd History and learning super random topics. Keep up the awesome content!

[grapeshot]

Septicemia bubonic plague was the version of the plague that they said you ate breakfast with your relatives but ate dinner with your ancestors.

[joshuagrahm]

You know, those stories about peoples houses getting bricked up if it was found out that they had the plague don’t seem as large of an overreaction when you’re talking about 100% lethality

[Big_E_Soul_Fragment]

"BRING OUT YOUR DEAD!"
"I'm not dead yet!"

[pamelamays]

Now I can fully appreciate that "Bring out your dead!" scene in Monty Python And The Holy Grail.

[nickd]

Absolute horrible yet necessary job. An interesting take on it, many legends and even nursery rhymes are based upon the plague but all the same thank you Weird History. Excellent vid. :-)

[hellraiser]

Love this video for I am a modern day ' body collector' . Being apart of the coroners office I pick up the deceased all day and all night in every type of death you can imagine.

[scottrick]

I'd be interested in hearing about the history of trash collectors.

[micahtischler]

Heck yes love this channel so much!! Perfect Sunday morning

[marquisdelafayette]

We all have Ignaz Semmelweis to thank for modern hand washing hygiene in hospitals. As a doctor be noticed that the women who had money and delivered their babies at the hospital by male doctors had higher mortality rates than those by midwives. He noticed how doctors would regularly go do autopsies and then deliver babies. So he came up with the idea of washing hands before, oh idk, using germy autopsy hands to spread disease.

Deaths dropped and it was effective.. til the backlash hit. Then he was called a quack and committed to an insane asylum like you would expect.

[crustyjuggler]

VIDEO IDEA: What were Medieval superstitions?

i.e folk tales, ghosts, woods, fairies, ect

[AeneasGemini]

I love history, it always puts modern problems into perspective. Our propensity to moan as if the sky is falling is always fairly annoying when you realise that even the very worst of times for us are probably still better than the best day of someone living through most eras of history

[vonslagle]

I would’ve ran into the wilderness and tried to survive by myself

[maxmcgraw]

You didn't say anything about the body collectors catching it.
How long did their career typically last?

[DrumWild]

In our modern age, some approach public health as if it's a political concern. They are literal and figurative mouth-breathers.

[historicalcucumber]

Fun fact: The people who survived the black death had a genetic mutation known as CCR5-Delta 32. That's why some descendants whose ancestors survived the plague in Europe carry the gene now, it's not found in people from Asian or African decent at all, which made researchers wonder why and it turns out those populations never faced the plague like Northern Europeans did....Because the mutation allowed those people to survive there was a limited gene pool and it was passed down to the children and so on. So if your a Caucasian whos ancestors survived the plague chances are good that you have at least one copy of the gene....another crazy fact is that if you inherent 2 copies of the Delta 32 gene (one from each parent) you can't be infected with hiv/aids at all as it makes you immune to it (the plague and hiv infect people by using the same receptors on white blood cells, think of the receptors as a lock and the plague and hiv as the key but people with this mutation dont have those receptors so theres no where for the key too attach and invade the hosts body.) Researchers are trying to find a way to use these genes to fight hiv/aids now. If you have only one copy of the gene you are far less likely to get hiv/aids than people who don't the mutation at all, but only the people with 2 copies are truly immune.

[smallbeginning]

Crazy to think all my ancestors must have survived these plagues long enough to reproduce

[cernowaingreenman]

With covid19, we've had many deaths, lots of hardships, along with many inconveniences-- but it still pales greatly when compared to the Black Plague of the late Middle Ages.

[TheElusiveReality]

Sanitation workers are always the most important, they truly hold our society together