History of the Plague: An Ancient Pandemic for the Age of Covid-19

During the fourteenth century, the bubonic plague or Black Death killed over one-third of Europe or 25 million people. Afflicted subjects died quickly and horribly from an unseen menace, spiking high fevers with suppurative buboes (swellings). Its causative agent is Yersinia pestis, creating recurrent plague cycles from the Bronze Age into modern-day California and Mongolia. Plague remains endemic in Madagascar, Congo, and Peru. This history of medicine review highlights plague events across the centuries.