The Bubonic Plague or "Black Death" came out of the eastern Mediterranean along shipping routes, reaching Italy in the spring of 1348. By the time the epidemic was abating in 1351, between 25% and 50% of Europe's population had died. The epidemic is believed to have started in China and made its way west across Asia to the Black Sea. One theory is that it entered Europe when a group of Tartars used catapults to hurl the dead bodies of infected soldiers over the walls of a Genoian trading outpost that was under siege. Because people had nodefense against the disease and no understanding of how it spread, it brought panic as well as illness and death.Lepers, as well as Jews and other ethnic and religious minorities, wereaccused of spreading the plague andthousands of people were executed.We now know that the disease was spread by infected fleas that attached themselves to rats and human. Themost striking symptom of the plague was dark swellings or "buboes" in the lymph glands on a victim's neck,armpits and groin. They ranged in size from an egg to an apple. Once the swelling appeared, an infected person wasusually dead within a week. Another even more virulent form attacked the respiratory system and was spread bybreathing the exhaled air of a victim. Once a person was infected, their life expectancy was one or two days.One of the most striking descriptions of the plague is in the introduction toThe Decameron. The book was writtenby Giovanni Boccaccio of Florence. It tells the story of seven men and three women who flee to a villa outside thecity where they are able to survive