Bring Out Your (Very Infrequent) Dead!
If you imagine the bubonic plague, based on what you learned as a kid, you probably imagine something similar to Pieter Bruegel’s 1562 painting, The Triumph of Death. Dead bodies in piles. Helpless civilians sprawled on the ground in anguish. Panicked crowds trying to flee as the village burns and falls into disarray. Total mayhem.
We identify the plague with history, with pandemics such as the “Black Death” that wiped out a third of the European population in the 14th century.
