Learning from the black death

In the space of three or 4 years in the fourteenth century, around half the population of Europe died of plague. So did around a third of people in the Middle East and North Africa, as well as countless victims in central Asia – where the pandemic originated – and in China. Total deaths were probably around 75 million, only exceeded in history by the Second World War. Because the population of the world in the Middle Ages was far smaller than now, this meant that there was a direct impact on almost every town, village and family.1 For comparison, the current pandemic of COVID-19 has so far claimed around a tenth as many lives and has killed approximately one in a thousand of the world’s population, as opposed to nearly half. Our world is very different from seven centuries ago in terms of medical understanding, prevention and treatment...
Source: Postgraduate Medical Journal - Category: General Medicine Authors: Tags: On reflection Source Type: research