The Black Death

In the 1300s, a third of the population of Europe died of plague carried by rat-borne fleas, shocking the medieval world to its foundations. "Very rarely," award-winning author Charles Mee writes, "does a single event change history by itself. Yet an event of the magnitude of the Black Death could not fail to have had an enormous impact." Here, in this essay, is the counterintuitive story of the plague and the horrible suffering it created as it opened people's minds to the power of science and human creativity.