According to Sarah Frances Vanneste’s thesis for Wayne State University, “Within the scholarship, many early works on the Black Death in general and on medicine in specific cite the Black Death as a major turning point both in European history and in the history of medicine.”1 Vanneste states repeatedly throughout her investigation that the Black Death evoked an extremely substantial change in the progression of medicine. Her thesis explores the fact that "medical practitioners scrambled to both explain the origins of the plague and develop ways to prevent and cure it.”2 All of the former methods of treatment became obsolete when such a detrimental disease struck, forcing medical practitioners to search for new options, and eventually lead to countless crucial advancements.According to the author, the plague marked the end of the medieval era, and marked the distant beginning of modern times. One way in which this occurred was that many formerly uneducated doctors began to seek both answers and prestige, leading them to seek formal training and become much more adept at their craft. …show more content…
The basis for this argument is that widespread formal education led to a much greater abundance of able and gifted doctors, therefore paving the way for numerous future discoveries. Vanneste elaborates on this argument and various others throughout the length of her thesis. Although this thesis’s primary focus is the implications of the plague on the advancement of medical science, it also evaluates how the pandemic changed everyday life for people. Many average families broke up from both death and dramatic personality challenges within. Formerly optimistic people often developed extreme paranoia, along with various other mental