Intimate History Of The Black Death

Have you ever wished you could take away the pain of others? The Great Mortality An Intimate History of the Black Death, the most Devastating Plague of All Time by John Kelly is a true story of a apocalyptic time period. During the 14th century a plague emerged from central Asia and spread towards the cities of Mediterranean in Europe. In this era the fastest transportation was a horse so people couldn’t escape this tragedy. The plague spread all over Europe from the Mediterranean to North Atlantic and the British Isles to Russia. European society was drastically changed more than one third of the population of Europe expired. A lot of people had died because of this windy plague. For this killer to have demolish thousands of people you would have thought it was a war they were fighting, Yes It was a war but not with humans, it was a war against the microbe Yersinia pestis. Yersinia Pestis is a bacteria that can infect humans and animals.

The tragic events from this book is still written in History. We will never forget such a disease that traveled so far and killed animals and people. I have heard a little bit of the plague and I didn’t know how much of an impact on society it caused during that time period. The book was an eye opener for me and it was very well written.

John draws a picture in our heads about the changes that were caused by the Black Death and how it changed History. The author gives details on the culture and how the people got affected by the plague,how they lived and died. “It was corpses packed like “lasagna” in municipal plague pits, collection carts winding through early-morning streets to pick up the previous day’s dead, husbands abandoning dying wives and parents abandoning dying children- for fear...

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...about how it may be being transmitted into people.”

'We still don't know the mode of transmission or host (of the virus),' said WHO spokesman Gregory Hartl” “Is New Bird Flu Outbreak Linked to 20,000 Dead Pigs? Three Die in China as Scientists Isolate New Strain of Killer Virus." Dailymail. Daily Mail Reporter, 3 Apr. 2013. Web. 4 Apr. 2014

In order for them to be able to control this the scientist would have to know where it’s coming from first. That is the scary thing, what if they never find the location of where the Bird flu came from? Something like this can wipe off the whole population.

This history novel will attract people that want to learn about the diseases in history and how it affected the society. I enjoyed reading this book and learned a lot from it. I would recommend people to read this book. Keep this in mind “History will always repeat itself.”