What is the Black Plague?
In just three short years between 1347 and 1350 one in every four people in Europe died in one of the worst natural disasters in history: the Black Plague. By 1352 it would wipe out a third of Europe’s population, or 25 million people, and would continue to spread death off and on for the next 300 years. Also known as the Black Death, the Black Plague started in China where infected rats passed the disease to fleas that quickly spread it to humans. With utter swiftness it killed the majority of victims it touched, usually within mere hours. What might have seemed at first like an epidemic quickly took on pandemic proportions. The Black Plague was so named because of large black boils that would form at the site of glands. However, there were actually three different types of plague: bubonic, pneumonic and septicemic. Bubonic plague was the most common, spread by fleas and rodents. Lymph nodes would swell in the armpits, neck and groin, to the size of an egg or apple, and would turn bla
