Historians say plagues and pestilence have reshaped countries before, changing politics, contributing to instability, retarding economic development and altering social relations.

And they said: The God of the Hebrews hath called us, to go three days' journey into the wilderness, and to sacrifice to the Lord our God; lest a pestilence or the sword fall upon us.

For now I will stretch out my hand to strike thee, and thy people, with pestilence, and thou shalt perish from the earth.

Let the minutes show that Mary, the cat, the dog and the hidden pestilence in this home have all attended the family meeting," said Tom.

There is one rule that works in every calamity. Be it pestilence, war, or famine, the rich get richer and poor get poorer. The poor even help arrange it.

Many squandered their money on charms and amulets, thinking that would ward off the pestilence.

Scarce stand the vessels hauled upon the beach, / and bent on marriages the young men vie / to till new settlements, while I to each / due law dispense and dwelling place supply, / when from a tainted quarter of the sky / rank vapours, gathering, on my comrades seize, / and a foul pestilence creeps down from high / on mortal limbs and standing crops and trees, / a season black with death, and pregnant with disease.

Manzoni outlines the mistakes that allowed the pestilence to spread, from the outlying villages of the contadini [peasants] to the Milanese.

Manzoni notes that when news of the sickness reached the city “anyone might suppose that there would be a general stir of disquiet, a clamor for precautions of some kind [whatever their real value] to be taken ... But one of the few points about which all the memoirs of the time agree is that there was nothing of the kind ... Anyone who mentioned the danger of the pestilence, whether in the streets, the shops or in private houses — anyone who even mentioned the word ‘plague’ — was greeted with incredulous mockery or angry contempt.”