'The Great Mortality' (washingtonpost.com)

'The Great Mortality' (washingtonpost.com): "It is tempting to say that the horrors of the Black Death are beyond the comprehension of 21st-century readers, but in fact a contemporary comparison is all too painfully at hand: World War II, the effects of which were felt almost everywhere that humans lived and the human toll of which ran into the tens of millions. As Kelly puts it, 'the plague bacillus, Yersinia pestis, swallowed Eurasia the way a snake swallows a rabbit -- whole, virtually in a single sitting. From China in the east to Greenland in the west, from Siberia in the north to India in the south, the plague blighted lives everywhere, including in the ancient societies of the Middle East: Syria, Egypt, Iran, and Iraq. How many people perished in the Black Death is unknown; for Europe, the most widely accepted mortality figure is 33 percent. In raw numbers that means that between 1347, when the plague arrived in Sicily, and 1352, when it appeared in the plains of Moscow, the continent lost twenty-five million of its seventy-five million inhabitants.'
It was a dreadful way to die. People's physiques were grossly distended, unbearable pain rushed through them, they screamed and wept as they died. Though previous and subsequent epidemics moved relatively slowly, this one marched from place to place with such speed that 'several medieval medical authorities were convinced the disease was spread via glance.' As one wrote: 'Instantaneous death occurs when the aerial spirit escaping from the eyes of the sick man strikes the healthy person standing near and looking at the sick.' The considerably more mundane truth is that it was spread at first by rats -- in particular one known then as 'Pharaoh's rat,' now called the tarabagan -- and then by the breath and touch of the humans afflicted. "