ISBN10: 0313324921, ISBN13: 9780313324925, [publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, Westport] Hardcover Hardcover. Probably the greatest natural disaster to ever curse humanity, the Black Death's lethality is legendary, killing between a quarter to over half of any given stricken area's population. Though historians suspect a first wave of bubonic plague struck the Mediterranean area between 571 - 760 C.E., there is no doubt that the plague was carried west by the Mongol Golden Horde in the late 1340s as they raided as far west as Constantinople, where it is believed that Genoese traders became infected, and then carried, the disease into European and northern African ports after their escape. Within about two years practically the entire European continent and much of North Africa had been burned over by this disaster of apocalyptic proportions.Eight thematic chapters guide the reader through the medical perspective of the plague medieval and modernand to the plague's impact on society, cities, individuals, and art of the time. Medieval doctors named miasmatic vaporsbad air as a primary cause of infection, along with an improper balance of the four Humorsblood, phlegm, black bile and yellow bile, often caused by ominous astrological alignments; or so they believed. Scapegoats, often Jews, were persecuted and murdered as frightened people desperately sought somebody to blame for the spread of the plague. Others assumed the plague was God's ...

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