During the Black Death, which originated in Asia and terrorized Europe from 1347 to 1352, artists captured the macabre zeitgeist with depictions of mocking skeletons wielding scythes and leading townsfolk to their painful deaths. Between 25 million and 30 million people perished, and, historians say, the medieval mind blamed the plague’s boils and fevers on God’s failure to hear the prayers of the doomed — not, as it turned out, on fleas infected by rats.
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