This narrative contains some startling assertions: that the Mongol army hurled plague-infected cadavers into the besieged Crimean city of Caffa, thereby transmitting the disease to the inhabitants and that fleeing survivors of the siege spread plague from Caffa to the Mediterranean Basin. This memoir has been published several times in its original Latin ( 2, 3) and has recently been translated into English (4) (although brief passages have been previously published in translation, see reference ).

China, India, and the rest of the Far East are commonly believed to have also been severely affected, but little evidence supports that belief (1).Ī principal source on the origin of the Black Death is a memoir by the Italian Gabriele de’ Mussi. Europe lost an estimated one quarter to one third of its population, and the mortality in North Africa and the Near East was comparable.

The Black Death, which swept through Europe, the Near East, and North Africa in the mid-14th century, was probably the greatest public health disaster in recorded history and one of the most dramatic examples ever of emerging or reemerging disease.

Downloading Disease Infected: Plague