How did people attempt to deal with the disease?

Many people believed they could be cured by plague doctors
or magician

When the Black Death struck Europe and Asia for the first time during the 1300 hundreds, the people of the time were alarmed and horrified as they had never seen a disease spread so fast and become so devastating. As explained before in the last paragraph there were thousands of cures available but unfortunately barley anyone of them worked. Because antibiotics, modern day medicine and hospitals weren't around people had to create their own cures and hope they would work. Many people started turning to churches and Priests as they believed the plague was Gods punishment upon them for doing wrong and some extremists would even whip themselves in the centre of town begging for gods forgiveness. Unfortunately this would not only have been extremely painful but this only spread the disease to more people because of the open wounds. During this time most normal doctors did not treat the victims of the plague instead a “plague doctor” would.  Plague doctors were hired by cities or town to treat victims who had the disease.  Most plague doctors were not actually doctors as they would take the job when they were trying to start their careers as physicians or surgeons, some had even been fruit sellers before they became plague doctors. One of most commons methods plague doctors were taught to do was make small cuts on their patients or put leaches on them to release blood as they believed a plague victims’ blood was full of poison.  Heavy fabric overcoats with glass eyes , big shoes, leather hats , leather gloves and a long cone shaped beak filled with herbs, mint leaves, rose petals and other strong smelling plant life was worn by most plague doctors as protective wear and a long wooden cane was used to examine the patients without actually touching them.  The beak contained strong smelling plants because most people (including doctors) believed it was bad smells that  caused the disease;however we now know that it was fleas that caused the Black  Death.

A plague doctors protective wear 

Some of the  cures that people came up were very unpleasant and  sometimes even harmful  and none of them would be  used these days. Some of them included drinking mercury or arsenic (deadly poisons), wash yourself with  urine but not water (plague doctors advised their patients not to bath in water), or rub your wounds with a live chicken.  Thousands of Jews were also killed as a cure after it was claimed they caused the Black Death. Some of the causes and cures of the black death can be seen in this you tube clip
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EUw8FWtiigA

sources
http://www.middle-ages.org.uk/black-death.htm
http://issworldhistory.forumotion.net/t2182-strange-cures-for-the-black-plague