An Odyssey in the Second Year of the Plague – Back to Black

It all started with unfathomable things happening in China.

Initially, no one in the West paid much attention to it.

It travelled via the trade routes and port cities.

It affected the poor far worse than the rich.

The authorities were at a loss to know how to deal with it.

Conspiracy theories regarding its cause abounded.

Doctors were at the forefront of being victims of it.

And then doctors began refusing to see patients.

Some people shut themselves away and avoided contact with everyone else.

Others just partied and didn't care about anyone but themselves.

Does any of this sound familiar?

This is all chronicled in the excellent Philip Ziegler book The Black Death. It's all about the 14th-century plague of course – but it's also about how humans react to such calamities – and perhaps how we have learned nothing at all...