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LAG PHASE. “It took some time for people to recognize that a terrible epidemic was breaking out among them and for chroniclers to note this. The timescale varies: in the countryside it took about forty days for realisation to dawn; in most towns with a few thousand inhabitants, six to seven weeks; in the  cities with over 10,000 inhabitants, about seven weeks, and in the few metropolises with over 100,000 inhabitants, as much as eight weeks.” https://lnkd.in/gZz5b2U View in LinkedIn

SHIP RATS. “Importantly, plague was spread considerable distances by rat fleas on ships. Infected ship rats would die, but their fleas would often survive and find new rat hosts wherever they landed. Unlike human fleas, rat fleas are adapted to riding with their hosts; they readily also infest clothing of people entering affected houses and ride with them to other houses or localities. This gives plague epidemics a peculiar rhythm and pace of development and a characteristic pattern of dissemination.” https://lnkd.in/gZz5b2U View in LinkedIn

TWENTY THREE DAYS. “The infection takes three–five days to incubate in people before they fall ill, and another three–five days before, in 80 per cent of the cases, the victims die. Thus, from the introduction of plague contagion among rats in a human community it takes, on average, twenty-three days before the first person dies.” https://lnkd.in/gZz5b2U View in LinkedIn

CONTEMPORARY ACCOUNT: “in many places in Siena great pits were dug and piled deep with the multitude of dead [...] And there were also those who were so sparsely covered with earth that the dogs dragged them forth and devoured many bodies throughout the city.” https://lnkd.in/gZz5b2U View in LinkedIn

ENORMOUS IMPACT. “The Black Death was one of the most devastating pandemics in human history, resulting in the deaths of an estimated 75 to 200 million people in Eurasia and peaking in Europe in the years 1346–1353. In total, the plague may have reduced the world population from an estimated 450 million down to 350–375 million in the 14th century. The world population as a whole did not recover to pre-plague levels until the 17th century. The plague recurred occasionally in Europe until the 19th century.” https://lnkd.in/gjdinF2 View in LinkedIn

TURNING POINT. “The Black Death was not only one of the greatest disasters in European history, but it was also one of the most defining moments in world history.” https://lnkd.in/gSKiQpE View in LinkedIn

“THE BLACK DEATH of 1348-49 was the greatest biomedical disaster in European and possibly world history”. https://lnkd.in/gSKiQpE View in LinkedIn

PRE-PLAGUE EUROPE. “At the beginning of the 14th century, Europe was in the midst of a revitalization. The agricultural revolution had made food more plentiful than before. More land was being cultivated and life was more optimistic than it had been for centuries. Despite a famine from 1315-1317 and the onset of the Hundred Year’s War, the 14th century continued to be a time of growth in Europe. This growth came to an end in 1347 though, with the emergence of the Black Death.” https://lnkd.in/gSKiQpE View in LinkedIn

PRE- AND POST-PLAGUE. “Given that the mortality associated with the Black Death was extraordinarily high and selective, the medieval epidemic might have powerfully shaped patterns of health and demography in the surviving population, producing a post-Black Death population that differed in many significant ways, at least over the short term, from the population that existed just before the epidemic.” https://lnkd.in/g2FqTm7 View in LinkedIn

SONG OF DARWIN. "The more I study nature, the more I become impressed […] that the contrivances and beautiful adaptations [acquired through natural selection] transcend in an incomparable degree [those] which the most fertile imagination of the most imaginative man could suggest with unlimited time at his disposal." https://lnkd.in/eykUy37 View in LinkedIn