Plague and Cholera

Nina och Magnus Västerbro

The houses are empty, the cities deserted, the fields unplanted, roads covered with corpses. Everywhere a terrible desolation. Would you believe this, you who are living many years later? We ourselves, who sees all of this, can hardly believe it.
This was written by an Italian poet who lived during the great plague epidemic that we call the Black Death.

The Black Death is the most well-known of all the great plagues throughout history. A plague is an infectious disease that spreads from human to human. Plague, leprosy, cholera, tuberculosis, smallpox and the Spanish flu – today there are drugs and vaccines against these plagues that took the lives of so many in the past. Smallpox, for example, has been fought so effectively that it almost doesn’t exist anymore. But what was it like before vaccines and antibiotics, and before modern medicine? When they had to resort to herbs, religious rites and pure superstition to fight the most feared diseases.

Illustrated by Johan Egerkrans