28 pages 56 minutes read

Philip Ziegler

The Black Death

Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 1969

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Essay Topics

1.

How did the unknown origin of the plague, as well as the inability to find a cure, affect the lives and attitudes of the citizens of Europe?

2.

Research another pandemic—either the Spanish Flu of 1918, or the Covid pandemic of 2020. How has reading The Black Death contributed to your understanding of how a society should react to a global pandemic or health crisis? How were medieval reactions to the Black Death similar to those of the recent past? How were they different?

3.

How did the limited state of medieval medical knowledge contribute to the spread of the Black Death? Why did superstition and disinformation spread in the absence of scientific understanding?