THERE’S NOTHING LIKE a good plague to get the blood moving. When you look at plagues past it is hard to escape the conclusion that there is a hard-wired human response: fear and blame, dread and outrage.

Plagues have been a recurring event since the 14th century. The Black Death hit hard in the mid-1300s. It was, however, the second pandemic of bubonic plague. The first was the Justinian plague of the fifth and sixth centuries. But the impact of the Black Death was far greater, fuelled by decades of famine, pan-continental wars and increased foreign travel for trade. The Black Death lasted for 300 years.