ABSTRACT
The plague that ravaged Europe from the 1300s to the 1700s exists as one of the worst medical crises to confront humankind. Two frameworks might be used to consider the waves of plague that ravaged Europe during those four hundred years. The first is through the lens of the crisis of the time, recognizing that during its first major cycle, the plague was responsible for the deaths of over a third of Europeans within a period of less than two years. The second framework recognizes many of the changes within European societies and that, in turn, helped to give rise to perspectives and institutions that shaped much of the modern era. The Enlightenment provided much of the thinking that would begin to develop in the early years of the early-modern era. The changes provide greater access to the institutions of knowledge production, the scientific foundations, and medical progress in areas of human political, social, and economic life.
