The Great Mortality. Really, really good. Maybe I should go over to the Health forum and suggest it.
The mortality rate from the plague during that time, 1347-1351 or so, was staggering. I town or locality got off lightly if only 20% of the population died. In contrast, the 1918 flu epidemic which is considered to have been quite deadly, only 10-20% of those infected died. And the infection rate was considerably less than what occurred in the 14th century. And 20% was a low death rate. In most places anywhere from 30-70% died. Not of those infected, but of the original population.
John Kelly, the author, spends a fair amount of time discussing the various death rates in different areas, how good the statistics are, and why it was so deadly and why the death rates varied so much. Several things are important. One is that the level of cleanliness on the part of Europeans was low. That doesn't even describe it. Most people did not change their clothes for months at a time, and rarely if ever bathed their entire bodies. People were routinely infested with fleas and lice. Peasants typically lived right alongside their animals. Public sanitation and removal of garbage or human waste was essentially non-existent. Another fascinating aspect was that about 25 years earlier there had been famine conditions in most of Europe. In those areas where the child mortality from the famine was greatest, there were fewer plague deaths. The reason? Childhood malnutrition keeps the immune system from developing properly. So in those areas where more children survived, they weren't as readily able to resist the plague as adults.
We also forget that plague stuck around, and kept on breaking out all over Europe every few years for about three centuries. It was the huge number of deaths in that first outbreak that altered life permanently. Anyway, I highly recommend this book to anyone at all interested in the topic.
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