The destruction and devastation caused by the “Black Death” of the Middle Ages was a phenomenon left to wonder at in text books of historical Europe. An unstoppable plague swept the continent taking as much as eighty percent of the European population along with it (Forsyth). However, Today the world is plagued with a similar deadly disease. The AIDS epidemic continues to be incurable. In an essay written by David Herlihy, entitled “Bubonic Plague: Historical …showed first 75 words of 686 total…

…showed last 75 words of 686 total…are strikingly similar. “ If history remains a reliable guide, this epidemic too will run its vicious course, spreading acute misery. Then it will take its place in the background of the ecosystem, alongside the organisms that cause influenza, syphilis, measles and a host of other infections.”(Manning) The similar characteristics of the bubonic plague and the HIV virus threaten AIDS to be the most dangerous and destructive plague of the millennium as David Herlihy proposed.