This inquiry is framed by the compelling question “Can disease change the world?” Among the many catastrophic global pandemics in history, perhaps none achieved the notoriety of the Black Death. The Black Death was a massive outbreak of the bubonic plague caused by infectious bacteria. Thought by scientists to have been spread by contaminated fleas on rats and/or other rodents, the Black Death quickly decimated entire families and communities. In doing so, the Black Death led more than one observer of the time to ponder whether the apocalypse had begun. The Black Death began and first spread o