Abstract
This chapter focuses on plague, which as the Black Death began in the 1300s, possibly killing one third of the people of Europe, as well as vast numbers farther east. Plague is less relevant today than in the past because of the use of antibiotics, but the shifting relation of plague with human society, driven by human capacity, should serve as a recapitulation of the central ideas of this book. Simultaneously, a disease capable of creating pandemic, a disease that can be limited by medicine, and a disease that can be deadly in modern times to those who contract it, plague, along with its animal reservoirs, shows how disease flexibility interacts with human ingenuity.