Three Black Cats: Sicily, 1348 Hi Folks! Here is Number 3: This invader from the East was more fearsome than any army of Huns or Mongols. The scientific name for its most frequent variation is yersinia pestis. The common name is bubonic plague. Medieval folks simply called it The Black Death. Soon after the first symptoms appeared, the victim was already practically dead, and most certainly so within a few days. Historians believe it entered Europe via the ports of Sicily in 1348. It spread rapidly, and by 1350 was all across the continent. By the time it finally ran its course, nearly half the population of the Eastern Hemisphere had been wiped out. Medical science of the 14th Century was too crude to combat such a swift and lethal adversary. But superstition exacerbated the already grave situation. Felines—a natural line of defense against rodents carrying the fleas that were spreading the infection—were regarded as creatures of the Devil. Most of them, but especially ones with black fur, were destroyed whenever they were caught. So the corpse wagons rolled on. The Black Death changed Europe profoundly. One of those ways it did so was through the emergence of a new literary genre: collections of stories about how people tried to cope with the cruel uncertainty of life that calamities such as plague brought to their times. Best examples include Boccaccio’s Decameron and Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. Can such an epidemic happen again? To appreciate the contemporary relevance of that question, think about diseases such as influenza, SARS, or AIDS. But to appreciate the depth of the threat, spend half an hour at any public restroom in America and count the number of patrons who fail to practice sensible hygiene. Thanx to the digital artists at Renderosity.com, 3Dcommune, Daz 3D, or Archive3D.net, whose props were used in the composition of this image. Dr Zik