ABSTRACT
HIV/AIDS and the threat of biological warfare have refuelled interest in the Black Death among professional historians, biologists, and the public. In Florence, Genoa, Venice, and most of northern Italy, expenditures on warfare increased exponentially after the Black Death to the fifteenth century as shown by the soaring of state indebtedness. Conversely, in Genoa, it was after the Black Death that the number of "general, popular, and noble revolts" increased. While the medium- and long-term consequences of the Black Death may continue to defy generalization, a sense of the immediate psychological consequences of the Black Death and its subsequent strikes can be scrutinized with greater clarity. Plague was seen as beneficial to medical progress: It had given post-Black Death doctors a new range of practical experience. In plague tracts doctors went further in describing and classifying these pustules by size, colour, and type.
