" The Black Death’s visit to Florence is unusually well documented. We know that the mortality claimed roughly fifty thousand lives, a death rate of 50 percent in a city of about a hundred thousand. We also know that while public order held, anarchy and disorder were common. Major riots were avoided, but flight was general and greed ubiquitous. During 1348, municipal officials stole 375,000 gold florins from the inheritances and estates of the dead. We know, too, that in Florence victims often developed two buboes instead of the one characteristic of modern plague. We know as well that many animals died; along with Boccaccio’s pigs, there are reports of dogs and cats and apparently even chickens being stricken by the gavoccioli, or plague boil. What "

― , The Great Mortality: An Intimate History of the Black Death, the Most Devastating Plague of All Time