La Pestilenza: True Story of ‘Black Plague’ of 1348

Plague doctors wore beak-like masks, stuffing the beak with herbs in a desperate attempt to protect themselves from the plague. [Courtesy]

However bad things are, they can get infinitely worse. And in Venezia, starting at the Ides of March as indeed they would across Europe for the next four years, they’d get so bad that most of those who survived would wish they were dead.

For with the floods and the famine, the returning traders had bought something bad within them from the Black Sea. It started with their having a continuous dry cough that wouldn’t stop. They’d cough and sweat till they spit blood and phlegm, and because this was la contagion, everyone around them was also coughing and spitting and shaking like a leaf. Soon, the entire city was heaving under a great racking of chests and breasts; and groaning with grief as people began to drop dead like flies in every household within two or three days of being taken ill.