In Europe, where the most complete figures are available, in many places the plague claimed a third of the population; in others, half the population; and in a few regions, 60 percent. The affliction was not limited to humans. For a brief moment in the middle of the fourteenth century, the words of Genesis 7—“All flesh died that moved upon the earth”—seemed about to be realized. There are accounts of dogs, cats, birds, camels, even of lions being afflicted by the “boil,” the telltale bubo of bubonic plague. By the time the pestilence ended, vast stretches of the inhabited world had fallen
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