The Year of Weeping
The Danse Macabre
ALAMY/GRANGER HISTORICAL PICTURE ARCHIVE
In the Islamic world, the medieval pandemic struck with particular ferocity: 20,000 deaths a day were reported at its peak in Cairo.
IN THE SUMMER of 1348, an English prelate warned that a lethal disease afflicting mainland Europe might soon “stretch its poisonous branches into this realm”. He was referring to the Black Death – then com monly termed “the pestilence” or “plague”. An estimated 100 million people worldwide died of it between 1347 and 1353. Identical symptoms were reported everywhere: black “bubo-like swellings in the groin, underarm and neck, fever and troubled breathing, and … the coughing up of blood”.
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