The Black Death

In the middle of the 14th century, Europe first began to hear of a plague ravaging the Near East. As people fled across the Black Sea and into the Mediterranean, they brought the plague with them—first to Genoa, then Sicily, and then the rest of the European mainland.

The origin of the name “Black Death” comes from an overly literal translation of the Latin term for the bubonic plague, “atra mors” (7), or dreadful death. The Black Death “seemed particularly well equipped to degrade and humiliate its victims” (10), bringing the most horrid symptoms imaginable: boils (or buboes, leading to the term bubonic), coughing, incontinence, and the like. Many theories were offered at the time as to how the plague came to be, and how it was spreading: the infection and corruption of the air, the influence of the stars and planets, gas clouds released by recent earthquakes. It was generally acknowledged that isolation of the sick was the best practice, and that one could be infected by the breath of a sick person.

Over the course of recorded history, there have been three such plagues of this sort: the first spanned the sixth and seventh centuries, the second was