![]() In his introduction to the fictional portion of his book, Boccaccio gives a graphic description of the effects of the epidemic on his city. The experience inspired him to write The Decameron, a story of seven men and three women who escape the disease by fleeing to a villa outside the city. The Italian writer Giovanni Boccaccio lived through the plague as it ravaged the city of Florence in 1348. Having no defense and no understanding of the cause of the pestilence, the men, women and children caught in its onslaught were bewildered, panicked, and finally devastated. Finally, the septicemic version of the disease attacked the blood system. It was much more virulent than its bubonic cousin - life expectancy was measured in one or two days. A second variation - pneumonic plague - attacked the respiratory system and was spread by merely breathing the exhaled air of a victim. Infected fleas that attached themselves to rats and then to humans spread this bubonic type of the plague. The painful ordeal, the manifestation of these lesions usually signaled the victim had a life expectancy of up to a week. These tumors could range in size from that of an egg to that of an apple. The bubonic variant (the most common) derives its name from the swellings or buboes that appeared on a victim's neck, armpits or groin. The plague presented itself in three interrelated forms. By the time the epidemic played itself out three years later, anywhere between 25% and 50% of Europe's population had fallen victim to the pestilence. Coming out of the East, the Black Death reached the shores of Italy in the spring of 1348 unleashing a rampage of death across Europe unprecedented in recorded history.
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