The Black Death 1347

The Black Death of the late Middle Ages is often described as the greatest natural disaster in the history of humankind. More than fifty million people, half of Europe’s population, died during the first outbreak alone from 1347 to 1353. Plague then returned fifteen more times through to the end of the medieval period in 1500, posing the greatest challenge to physicians ever recorded in the history of the medical profession. This engrossing book provides the only comprehensive history of the medical response to the Black Death over time. Leading historian John Aberth has translated many unknown plague treatises from nine different languages that vividly illustrate the human dimensions of the horrific scourge. He includes doctors’ remarkable personal anecdotes, showing how their battles to combat the disease (which often afflicted them personally) and the scale and scope of the plague led many to question ancient authorities. Dispelling many myths and misconceptions about medicine during the Middle Ages, Aberth shows that plague doctors formulated a unique and far-reaching response as they began to treat plague as a poison, a conception that had far-reaching implications, both in terms of medical treatment and social and cultural responses to the disease in society as a whole.

This eleventh edition was developed during the encyclopaedia's transition from a British to an American publication. Some of its articles were written by the best-known scholars of the time and it is considered to be a landmark encyclopaedia for scholarship and literary style.

Illus. on lining papers. Bibliography: p. 223-224.

A series of natural disasters in the Orient during the fourteenth century brought about the most devastating period of death and destruction in European history. The epidemic killed one-third of Europe's people over a period of three years, and the resulting social and economic upheaval was on a scale unparalleled in all of recorded history. Synthesizing the records of contemporary chroniclers and the work of later historians, Philip Ziegler offers a critically acclaimed overview of this crucial epoch in a single masterly volume. The Black Death vividly and comprehensively brings to light the full horror of this uniquely catastrophic event that hastened the disintegration of an age.

A fascinating work of detective history, The Black Death traces the causes and far-reaching consequences of this infamous outbreak of plague that spread across the continent of Europe from 1347 to 1351. Drawing on sources as diverse as monastic manuscripts and dendrochronological studies (which measure growth rings in trees), historian Robert S. Gottfried demonstrates how a bacillus transmitted by rat fleas brought on an ecological reign of terror -- killing one European in three, wiping out entire villages and towns, and rocking the foundation of medieval society and civilization.

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

This is the first systematic scholarly study of the Ottoman experience of plague during the Black Death pandemic and the centuries that followed. Using a wealth of archival and narrative sources, including medical treatises, hagiographies, and travelers' accounts, as well as recent scientific research, Nükhet Varlik demonstrates how plague interacted with the environmental, social, and political structures of the Ottoman Empire from the late medieval through the early modern era. The book argues that the empire's growth transformed the epidemiological patterns of plague by bringing diverse ecological zones into interaction and by intensifying the mobilities of exchange among both human and non-human agents. Varlik maintains that persistent plagues elicited new forms of cultural imagination and expression, as well as a new body of knowledge about the disease. In turn, this new consciousness sharpened the Ottoman administrative response to the plague, while contributing to the makings of an early modern state.

The Black Death in Europe, from its arrival in 1347-52 into the early modern period, has been seriously misunderstood. From a wide range of sources, this study argues that it was not the rat-based bubonic plague usually blamed, and considers its effect on European culture.

Yaron Ayalon explores the Ottoman Empire's history of natural disasters and its responses on a state, communal, and individual level.

It came out of Central Asia, killing one-third of the European population. And among the survivors, a new skepticism arose about life and God and human authority. Here, in this essay by British historian Philip Ziegler, is the story of the plague that ravaged Europe.