The delirious victim staggers about in his final moments.
His speech is slurred,
skin purple-black covered with swollen, pus-filled lumps as death calls him.
Witnesses to this terrifying spectacle called it the 'danse macabre' or dance of death.
In the fourteenth century a terrible catastrophe fell upon Asia,
Europe, the Middle East and North Africa that would change the course of history -
the Black Death.
The Black Death or 'Bubonic Plague',
was an outbreak of disease that killed one third of the European population
in the period 1347 to 1350.
It had a similarly devastating impact in Asia, the Middle East and North Africa.
The disease played no favourites.
Rich and poor, young and old, priest and peasant,
all fell victim to this horrible and at the time,
unexplained sickness, which was spreading like wildfire.
The populations of entire towns and villages were wiped out in a matter of days.
The dead were buried in mass graves to cope with the rapid death toll.
Only a thin covering of soil was placed over the dead bodies
before another layer was buried on top.
Pope Clement VI consecrated - made sacred - the Rhone river
so corpses could be thrown straight into it.
So what is the Black Death?
Where did it come from?
While it's difficult to trace with any real certainty,
the outbreak is believed to have originated in the Gobi Desert in Mongolia
early in the fourteenth century.
Prior to this, the disease had existed for centuries in regions of Asia,
with small outbreaks occurring from time to time.
Any one of these could have been the source.
Once infected, the victim would first experience a high fever,
aching limbs and fatigue.
Within days, the lymph nodes in the neck, armpits and groin would start to swell and turn black.
These black swellings are where the 'Black Death' gets its name.
Michael Platiensis, firsthand witness to the horrors of the Black Death wrote.
"Here not only the 'burn blisters' appeared,
but there developed gland boils on the groin, the thighs, the arms, or on the neck.
At first these were of the size of a hazel nut,
and developed accompanied by violent shivering fits,
which soon rendered those attacked so weak that they could not stand up,
but were forced to lie in their beds consumed by violent fever.
Soon the boils grew to the size of a walnut, then to that of a hen's egg or a goose's egg,
and they were exceedingly painful, and irritated the body,
causing the sufferer to vomit blood.
The sickness lasted three days,
and on the fourth, the latest, the patient succumbed".
The stinking, pus filled swellings, otherwise known as 'buboes',
gave the bubonic plague its name.
Their nervous system under attack, victims would became crazed and delirious with fever.
Once the swollen lymph nodes started to burst within the body,
the sufferer was not long for this world.
Death usually occurred within the week.
By the time the infected person who had introduced the disease to the port,
town or village died,
others would already be in the early stages of infection.
This made preventing an epidemic incredibly difficult.
The outbreak of the 'Black Death' in the fourteenth century
actually involved three different strains of plague.
The most common - and visually the most gruesome form -
is the bubonic plague.
The second form was the pneumonic plague.
It infects the respiratory system once the bubonic strain reaches the lungs.
The third form - septicaemic plague -
infects the body's circulatory system;
that is the blood.
The bubonic plague is actually the weakest of the three strains.
During the worst outbreaks of the Black Death,
pneumonic and septicaemic plague had mortality rates of almost one hundred percent.
It's believed malnutrition played a major role in making the symptoms more dramatic.
Many who died had endured years of famine
- the result of severe storms and drought -
making their weakened immune system vulnerable.