The most likely explanation is that something is irritating or hurting your hand while you are sleeping. Your subconscious mind can take the physical sensation and produce a dream around that feeling without ever waking you up, complete with very frightening and convincing causes to explain the pain. Symbolically, the rat might represent something that is hurting or irritating you in real life, such as someone who makes "biting" remarks about your "hand"-crafts.
You probably have been reading or studying about epidemics in the news media or throughout history. These interests would naturally appear in your dreams. Additionally, the rats represent your personal problems and then the plague represents the possibly disastrous consequences resulting if those problems remain unsolved.
The rats in the dream represent problems or issues that not only feel threatening but also nasty, filthy, and shameful. These issues could also cause more serious problems if they are not addressed directly with swift action.
Rats were the vector of the bubonic plague
The plague was spread by fleas that lived on the rats.
The carrier of this plague is the rats the carrier of the plague is actually fleas and ticks because they bite the rats and give them the plague. So the carriers of the plague are most rodents, ticks, and fleas.
The plague was carried by rats, who were infested by fleas. As the rats succumbed to the plague, the starving fleas fed on humans infecting them with the plague.
the causes of the plague was the fleas on the rats they bit the rats and then when the rats died they moved on to bite the humans
The black plague. The plague was transferred by rats.
rats carried flea's. the flea's carried the plague the people got the plague from the flea's but blamed the rats.
Wild black rats.
Beacause rats have fleas.
No, rats never carried plague. It was the fleas that they carried. Domesticated rats don't have fleas. Even wild rats are very clean and any fleas they do have don't carry plague much anymore.
It is a common Misconception that rats started the plague but this is only partly true. The rats were attracted into the cities because of the rubbish and alsorts on the streets and with those rats came bacteria, these bacteria lived on the rats and soon the rats passed these bacteria onto humans and so the plague was started.
Plague vaccine or avoid rats with fleas.