Julianna Ainsleigh 
History remembers the Black Death. It forgets the stranger horrors. The plagues that made physicians flee, priests abandon their altars, and chroniclers struggle to describe what they were seeing. These are the extinctions we barely dodged.
1. The Antonine Plague (165-180 CE) — The Disease That Killed Rome
Possibly smallpox, possibly worse. Killed 5 million, including Emperor Marcus Aurelius. Roman soldiers vomited black blood. The Empire never fully recovered; some say it was not barbarians, but other factors, that ended antiquity.
2. The Plague of Cyprian (249-262 CE) — “The End of the World”
Victims’ eyes bled, intestines liquefied, and feet fell off due to gangrene. 5,000 died daily in Rome alone. St Cyprian called it the apocalypse. Even the pagans thought their gods had abandoned them.
3. The Sweating Sickness (1485-1551) — England’s 24-Hour Death
Healthy at breakfast, dead by dinner. Victims sweated blood, smelled of rotting flesh, whilst still alive. Then it vanished altogether. The scariest part? We still don’t know what it was.
4. The Dancing Plague (1518) — Strasbourg’s Death Dance
Started with one woman. Within a week, 400 people danced themselves to death. Broken feet, heart attacks, strokes. Physicians prescribed “more dancing.” The music only made it spread.
5. The Cocoliztli Epidemic (1545-1548) — The Bleeding Eyes of Mexico
Killed potentially up to 15 million — 80% of the Aztec population. Victims bled from every orifice, turned yellow, then black. Spanish barely noticed they were immune. Possibly their own livestock brought it upon them.
6. The Italian Plague (1629-1631) — The Plague That Walked Through Walls
Milan built walls, Venice burned ships, but nothing worked. Victims developed buboes that burst with a horrific stench. Priests refused last rites. A third of northern Italy died behind locked doors.
7. The Great Plague of Marseille (1720) — The Last Medieval Horror
The ship’s captain knew his cargo was infected. He docked anyway — profit over lives. 100,000 died. The poor were walled inside the city to die. The rich escaped, spreading it further. The wall still stands.
