“Every outbreak across the globe today stems from a descendant of the medieval plague.”
Hendrik Poinar
Evolutionary Biologist
To understand the costly and life-damaging phenomenon of workplace stress, it’s useful to have a brief look at history. The bubonic plague was once the scourge of Europe, killing millions and destroying entire communities. For centuries, people were powerless to stop this devastating illness. Why? Because they didn’t understand what caused it. Today, we know that the bubonic plague is a bacterial infection, spread by fleas, but in medieval times, this fact was invisible to them. Medieval doctors believed it was caused by “poisoned air” (similarly, the word “malaria” literally means “bad air”, a hangover from early misunderstandings about how the illness was spread).
