Product Description

This work offers alternative conclusions about the cultural and psychological reactions to the plague, why it led more often to Renaissance optimism than to widespread despair as so often concluded, especially from literary sources in the north of Europe. It begins by studying various medical aspects of the late-medieval plague, stressing later epidemiological findings - such as the rapid adaptation of its surviving human hosts, the sharp decline in mortality rates, and its evolution as a disease of children. As a consequence of the disease's course over its first 100 years, doctors became the vanguard of a new intellectual optimism, claiming to have surpassed the ancients (Galen and Hippocrates) in the art of healing. The book argues that the Black Death, in its epidemiology and its cultural effects, differed within Europe.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2149283 in Books
• Published on: 2002-05-03
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 320 pages

William M. Bowsky, Professor Emeritus, University of California at Davis, USA
Well-conceived, imaginative, and strongly argued... a definitive work on an important and much studied subject and will remain so for a long time.

Dr John Henderson, Wolfson College, Cambridge
Finally, here is a book that examines original sources throughout Europe to challenge convincingly the age-old paradigm of the Black Death as bubonic plague.

International Journal of Epidemiology
Well-conceived and well-argued, The Black Death Transformed will remain an important work for many years to come.