The Black Death of the 1340s killed around a third of Europe's population.

But after the 14th century, it didn't just pack up and go away.

For the next 300 years there were outbreaks of plague roughly every decade.

Its lethality was such that it could wreak destruction on a massive scale.

As victims seemed arbitrary, its symptoms were awful.

Continual vomiting, fever, thirst, difficulty breathing, feeling drowsy but unable to sleep,

postures across the skin and the distinctive black boobos or tumours that appeared at

the neck, arms and groin.

So painful we're told that sufferers cried for them to be cut out in an age before anesthesia.

And it not only killed horribly but horribly quickly.

Today we're going to be focusing on the impact of plague on one city in one year, Florence

in 1630 to 31, and it killed about 12% of the city's population of 75,000.

Our guide is Professor John Henderson, Professor Emeritus of Italian Renaissance history

at Birkbeck University of London and Emeritus Fellow at Wolfson College Cambridge.

He's the author and editor of eight books and numerous articles and chapters exploring

the history of epidemics, hospitals, healing, plague and piety.

His most recent book, however, is Florence Under Siege, surviving plague in an early

modern city, which was published by Yale University Press in 2019 and won a social history

society prize special commendation the following year.

Fittingly he speaks to me from a former monastery in Florence.

Professor Henderson, thank you so much for joining me today.

I'm really excited to talk to you about your wonderful book and the research in it.

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