A fluorescent image of a human body louse with Yersinia pestis infection — that's the cause of the plague — depicted in orange/red in the glands.
plague/National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases
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A 15th century woodcut depicts a patient suffering from the bubonic plague. A pandemic of the disease, the Black Death, killed an estimated 50 million people in Europe between 1346 and 1353. Pictures from History/Universal Images Group/Getty Images hide caption
A woodcut from the 15th century depicts a scene from the Black Death plague, which killed an estimated 50 million people in Europe and the Mediterranean between 1346 and 1353. Scientists say they may have found the origin of this deadly disease. Pictures from History/Universal Images Group/Getty Images hide caption
For nearly three centuries, the Republic of Ragusa, where modern-day Dubrovnik is centered, forced visitors to spend 40 days on the remote islands off the coast of the walled city, but in the 17th century, the city built the Lazarettos, a series of buildings immediately outside the city where visitors had to quarantine. This is the view from one of the quarantine cells. Rob Schmitz/NPR hide caption
Pandemics like the coronavirus "serve like looking glasses" that reflect society's vulnerabilities, author and Yale medical historian Frank Snowden says. Agence Photographique BSIP/Getty Images hide caption
Fleas transmit plague — but the pneumonic plague, the type reported from China this week, can spread from person to person as well. Oxford Science Archive/Print Collector/Getty Images hide caption
The bacterium that causes the plague travels around on fleas. This flea illustration is from Robert Hooke's Micrographia, published in London in 1665. Getty Images hide caption
Strike 2: Our second attempt at illustrating the plague story — with what we said was a 15th-century image by Jacopo Oddi from the La Franceschina codex depicting Franciscan monks treating victims of the plague in Italy — is about leprosy. A. Dagli Orti/Getty Images hide caption
The bacterium that causes the plague travels around on fleas. This flea illustration is from Robert Hooke's Micrographia, published in London in 1665. Getty Images hide caption
Venetians celebrate during the Festa del Redentore in Venice. The festival began in 1576 when the Republic's Senate voted to build a church on the Giudecca Island to Christ the Redeemer to thank God for the city's deliverance from the Plague. Marco Di Lauro/Getty Images hide caption
A 15th-century Bible depicts a couple suffering from the blisters of the bubonic plague. The same bacterium that ravaged medieval Europe as the "black death" occasionally re-emerges. Corbis hide caption
Victims of the plague are consigned to a communal burial during the Plague of London in 1665.
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