..To speak to or go near the sick brought infection and a common death... To touch the clothes (which) the sick had touched or worn gave the disease to the person touching" (Williams, 167). This description is quite accurate, yet even well-educated and enlightened Boccaccio himself did not know how the plague was spread from one person to another. It is also true that the plague bacillus could be spread simply by touching a piece of clothing worn by a dying person, due to rat fleas which would jump from the clothing to the person holding it without ever being aware of it.

Thus, under these extraordinary circumstances, the Black Death, so named because of the black buboes which appear on the body, completely mystified the medical community and its doctors whom at the time had been trained on pseudo-science, ignorance and superstition. As a result, all those who managed...
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