The Black Death

Forms of the Disease

Bubonic plague is usually fatal, though not inevitably so. Today, we have drugs that can cure it, if administered in time. But if the victim is already at risk, through malnutrition or other illness, it is more deadly. There were plenty of people in the 1340s who were at risk.

Even so, historians have been hard pressed to explain the extraordinary mortality of the 1348 outbreak. Our best guess is that there was more than one variety of plague at work in Europe.

There are two other varieties of plague: septicaemic plague, which attacks the blood, and pneumonic plague, which attacks the lungs. The latter is especially dangerous as it can be transmitted through the air. Both these two are nearly 100% fatal.

It seems likely that some form of pneumonic plague was at work alongside the bubonic plague in those awful years. But the many accounts we have describe mainly the bubonic form. The next two pages are two contemporary accounts of the plague.

History of Western Civilization

E.L. Skip Knox
Boise State University

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