The regional outbreaks of the disease that occurred after the Black Death—the epidemics of 1366–67, 1373, 1374, 1390, and 1400—all took place in periods of dearth. More centrally, the profound malnutrition of the Great Famine years may have left millions of Europeans more vulnerable to the Black Death. “A famine of . . . three years is of sufficient length to have devastating long-term effects on the future well being of human infants,” says Princeton historian William Chester Jordan, who points out that malnutrition often impedes proper immune system development, leaving the young with
...more
