Since at least the time of ancient Greece and Rome, massive outbreaks of disease have repeatedly ravaged the human race. Until quite recently, epidemics of cholera, smallpox, typhus, yellow fever, and influenza were commonplace, collectively taking, over the centuries, hundreds of millions of human lives. Occasionally these plagues have become disasters known as pandemics, spreading far from their points of origin to batter much of the world.
Perhaps the most infamous and fearsome of these afflictions was the bubonic plague, or Black Death, of the late Middle Ages. Originating in Asia, where it apparently killed many millions, it arrived in Europe in 1348. In the next six years it snuffed out the lives of an estimated 25 million Europeans, at least one-third of the continent’s population. During the next several centuries, lesser outbreaks of the bubonic place erupted as many as 40 times in parts of Europe and Asia.
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