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The Black Death and Justinian’s Plague: History’s Worst Pestilences

Khalid Elhassan January 8, 2025 13 min

Plague - Illustration from the medieval Liber Chronicarum 1, depicting skeletons rising for the dance of death — Illustration from the medieval Liber Chronicarum 1, depicting skeletons rising for the dance of death. Live Science

11. Black Death Varieties

Plague - Victims of the Black Death's bubonic strain. History Today — Victims of the Black Death’s bubonic strain. History Today

If a Black Death victim lasted for more than a few days, he or she might get to experience the final ravages of the plague: gangrene that ate away at the extremities and blackened fingers, toes, lips, and nose tip. Few lasted more than a few days, and many died within half a day of the first symptoms’ appearance. The bubonic plague was the most common form of the Black Death. However, the plague had two other deadly strains: the septicemic and pneumonic plagues. The differences were in the affected body parts. The bubonic plague hit the lymph nodes, the pneumonic targeted the lungs, while the septicemic infected the blood.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.