The Black Death 1346 1353

This study of the Black Death considers the nature of the disease, its origin, spread, mortality and its impact on history.

"Benedictow's findings relating to the mortality caused by the Black Death are based on the study and synthesis of all available demographic studies. Published over the past forty years, most of them in widely dispersed local journals and local histories, this cumulative evidence, astounding in its implications, has gone largely unnoticed. This book makes it indisputably clear that the true mortality rate was far higher than has been previously thought."--BOOK JACKET.

Completely revised and updated for this new edition, Benedictow's acclaimed study remains the definitive account of the Black Death and its impact on history. The first edition of The Black Death collected and analysed the many local studies on the disease published in a variety of languages and examined a range of scholarly papers. The medical and epidemiological characteristics of the disease, its geographical origin, its spread across Asia Minor, the Middle East, North Africa and Europe, and the mortality in the countries and regions for which there are satisfactory studies, are clearly presented and thoroughly discussed. The pattern, pace and seasonality of spread revealed through close scrutiny of these studies exactly reflect current medical work and standard studies on the epidemiology of bubonic plague. Benedictow's findings made it clear that the true mortality rate was far higher than had been previously thought. In the light of those findings, the discussion in the last part of the book showing the Black Death as a turning point in history takes on a new significance. OLE J. BENEDICTOW is Professor of History at the University of Oslo.

If the twenty-first century seems an unlikely stage for the return of a 14th-century killer, the authors of Return of the Black Death argue that the plague, which vanquished half of Europe, has only lain dormant, waiting to emerge again—perhaps, in another form. At the heart of their chilling scenario is their contention that the plague was spread by direct human contact (not from rat fleas) and was, in fact, a virus perhaps similar to AIDS and Ebola. Noting the periodic occurrence of plagues throughout history, the authors predict its inevitable re-emergence sometime in the future, transformed by mass mobility and bioterrorism into an even more devastating killer.

An overview of deadly diseases from throughout world history spanning from prehistoric civilizations to the twenty-first century. All you need for a plague to go pandemic are population clusters and travelers spreading the bacterial or viral pathogens. Many prehistoric civilizations died fast, leaving cities undamaged to mystify archeologists. Plague in Athens killed 30% of the population 430–426 BCE. When Roman Emperor Justinian I caught bubonic plague in 541 CE, contemporary historian Procopius described his symptoms: fever, delirium and buboes—large black swellings of the lymphatic glands in the groin, under the arms and behind the ears. That bubonic plague killed twenty-five million people around the Mediterranean. Later dubbed Black Death, it killed fifty million people 1346-1353, returning to London forty times in the next 300 years. The third bubonic plague pandemic started 1894 in China, claiming fifteen million lives, largely in Asia, before dying down in the 1950s after visiting San Francisco and New York. But it also hit Madagascar in 2014, and the Congo and Peru. The cause, yersinia pestis was identified in 1894. Infected fleas from rats on merchant ships were blamed for spreading it, but Porton Down scientists have a worrying explanation why the plague spread so fast. Any disease can go epidemic. Everyday European infections brought to the Americas by Cortes’ conquistadores killed millions of the natives, whose posthumous revenge was the syphilis the Spaniards brought back to Europe. The mis-named Spanish flu, brought from Kansas to Europe by U.S. troops in 1918 caused more than fifty million deaths. Fifty years later, H3N2 flu from Hong Kong killed more than a million people. One coronavirus produces the common cold, for which neither vaccine nor cure has been found, despite the loss of millions of working days each year. Chillingly, historian Douglas Boyd lists many other sub-microscopic killers still waiting for tourism and trade to bring them to us.

Sweeping across the known world with unchecked devastation, the Black Death claimed between 75 million and 200 million lives in four short years. In this engaging and well-researched book, the trajectory of the plague’s march west across Eurasia and the cause of the great pandemic is thoroughly explored. Inside you will read about... ✓ What was the Black Death? ✓ A Short History of Pandemics ✓ Chronology & Trajectory ✓ Causes & Pathology ✓ Medieval Theories & Disease Control ✓ Black Death in Medieval Culture ✓ Consequences Fascinating insights into the medieval mind’s perception of the disease and examinations of contemporary accounts give a complete picture of what the world’s most effective killer meant to medieval society in particular and humanity in general.