The Black Death Transformed: Disease and culture in early Renaissance Europe by Samuel Cohn, Edward Arnold/Oxford, £50/$65, ISBN 0340706465
OLD theories do not die simply because they are disproved. They die only when those who cling to them die—or so philosophers of science have argued. How nice, then, to read books that defy their gloomy prediction. Last year, two epidemiologists argued persuasively that Europe’s medieval Black Death could not have been bubonic plague carried by rats, the popular theory since early last century (New Scientist, 24 November 2001, p 34). Now historian Samuel Cohn, using many new sources…
