Episode #103 – What Caused the Black Death? (Part II)

When studying the plague of the 14th century it can be easy to focus on the death, but on Our Fake History we are so much more interested in life. The people who lived through the plague dealt with the horror of the disease in a variety of weird and wonderful ways. Some people turned to religion, others to hedonism. Some felt like the only option was to whip themselves in public. Tune in and find out how plague parties, the alignment of Mars and Jupiter, and a plague hag named “Pesta” all play role in the story.  

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Works Cited

Armstrong, Dorsey. The Black Death: The World’s Most Devastating Plague. Narrated by Armstrong, audiobook, The Great Courses, 2016. Audible.comhttps://www.thegreatcourses.com/courses/the-black-death-the-worlds-most-devastating-plague.html

Benedictow, Ole L. The Black Death 1346-1353: the Complete History. Boydell, 2008.

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Derbes, V. J. “De Mussis and the Great Plague of 1348. A Forgotten Episode of Bacteriological Warfare.” JAMA: The Journal of the American Medical Association, vol. 196, no. 1, 1966, pp. 59–62., doi:10.1001/jama.196.1.59.

Duncan, C J. “What Caused the Black Death?” Postgraduate Medical Journal, vol. 81, no. 955, 2005, pp. 315–320., doi:10.1136/pgmj.2004.024075.

Herlihy, David, and Samuel Kline. Cohn. The Black Death and the Transformation of the West. Harvard University Press, 2001.

Hoyle, Fred, and Chandra Wickramasinghe. Diseases from Space. Sphere, 1981.

Kelly, John. The Great Mortality: an Intimate History of the Black Death, the Most Devastating Plague of All Time. HarperCollins, 2001.

Opie, Iona, and Peter Opie. The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes. Oxford University Press, 1992.

Twigg, Graham. The Black Death: a Biological Reappraisal. Schocken Books, 1985.

Wheelis, Mark. “Biological Warfare at the 1346 Siege of Caffa.” Emerging Infectious Diseases, vol. 8, no. 9, 2002, pp. 971–975., doi:10.3201/eid0809.010536.

Ziegler, Philip. The Black Death. Faber & Faber, 2013.