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The bubonic plague, or Black Death, spread across Europe, slowly but steadily, from 1347 to around 1352. The culprit, Yersinia pestis, is a pathogen carried by fleas who ingest it when feeding on an infected host. It blocks the fleas’ intestines causing them to become starved for nutrients, which leads them to feed voraciously and infect their subsequent hosts. Fleas are adept at living on rats, other animals, and humans – with some resistant hosts serving only as carriers and others quickly dying once bitten and infected. It is a horrifying disease: beginning like a flu with weakness and fever, but turning into extensive hemorrhaging. The dying tissues turn black, giving the plague its nickname of Black Death. The sanitation of the era, a lack of understanding of contagion, and close proximity of humans and many animals meant that the disease was amazingly virulent in the growing cities of the Middle Ages. It cut the populations of Paris and Florence roughly in half within a couple of years, with even larger death tolls in cities like Hamburg and London. It is believed to have made its way along the Silk Road from China to Constantinople, and later from Genoese trading ships to Sicily by 1347, where it quickly wiped out roughly half of the island’s population. It continued to spread, hitting parts of Italy, and then Marseille, before spreading through France and Spain, and eventually getting to the northern countries a few years later. Overall, it is estimated to have killed more than 40 percent of Europe’s population, as well as 25 million people in China and India before even reaching Europe.