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In art, the changes were extreme. During the pre-plague times noble lords were shown in full health, in their best clothes and armor, holding their swords. Afterwards, half-decomposed bodies with parts of skeleton clearly visible were shown. The clothes draping the body were old dirty rags, and some sculptures showed worms and snails burrowing in the rotten flesh. Suffering became a favorite theme. 

"Barney Sloane, author of The Black Death in London, said: "An emergency cemetery is a really uncommon find: they were open for a very short while in response to a disease that wiped out 60% of London in months. "They give us a snapshot of the health, lifestyle and demographic make up of London - and since the plague killed indiscriminately there should be a good cross-section.""

"The idea that Medieval people drank beer or wine to avoid drinking bad water is so established that even some very serious scholars see no reason to document or defend it; they simply repeat it as a settled truth. In fact, if no one ever documents the idea, it is for a very simple reason: it's not true."

The international effects of Black Death Death and disease were familiar features of life in the Middle Ages, but previous epidemics were dwarfed by the arrival of the Black Death. It erupted out of central Asia to create a pandemic greater even than the Plague of Justinian 800 years earlier. Present in bubonic, pneumonic and septicaemic forms, the Black Death had killed millions by the time it finally declined. Europe may have lost a third of its people, China perhaps half. Besides death, the disease brought fear, panic and very often a complete breakdown of society.