The Black Death

The Black Death

Towards the middle of .the fourteenth century some Italian merchants who were occupied in trading with China by the overland route were besieged by the Tartars in a small town on the river Don. They were, however, driven out of this town, and many of them, together with their merchandise from China, found refuge in the fortified post of Caff a, in the Crimea. Later they were again besieged in t...

What caused the Black Death?

For the whole of the 20th century it was believed that the Black Death and all the plagues of Europe (1347-1670) were epidemics of bubonic plague. This review presents evidence that this view is incorrect and that the disease was a viral haemorrhagic fever, characterised by a long incubation period of 32 days, which allowed it to be spread widely even with the limited transport of the Middle Ag...

AIDS and the Black Death.

Sir, We appreciate Dr Harvey’s interest in our paper, and wholeheartedly agree that coeliac disease is an important cause of iron-deficiency anaemia; this diagnosis will have been considered and pursued where appropriate in the patients in our study. However, the purpose of our study was not to expound every presumed cause of iron-deficiency anaemia in our large series of patients. Such a repor...

The Black Death in the Middle East

Saint Sebastian and the Black Death.

The martyrdom of Saint Sebastian is one of the most enduring themes in Western religious art. The execution scene so often portrayed - with the Saint transfixed with arrows - is based on the legend about his life and death during the reign of the Roman emperor, Diocletian. However, it is the symbolic association of arrows with the Black Death - during the Middle Ages and during the Renaissance ...