Beginning of Essay
Cantor states that, No one - peasant or aristocrat - was safe from the disease [], and once it was contracted, a horrible and painful death was almost a certainty. The dead and the dying lay in the streets abandoned by frightened friends and relatives (482). This ....

Middle of Essay
.... of how the disease was spread or how it could be stopped. The plague was transmitted to western Europe from China along trade routes (Matthew 154). Once the plague had reached the coast of Europe, it was soon transmitted to the countryside through the commercial trade networks (Matthew 154). The first cases of the plague occurred in a European colony called Genoa (Blum, Cameron and Barnes 38). It was "besieged in 1347" by mongols, who flung plague riddled bodies over the walls of Genoa. This was considered "an early form of biological warfare" (Blum, Cameron and Barnes 38). According to Matthews, "Experts could do nothing to cure or explain the ....