Europe's Profiteering from Plague Deaths

Foreign doctors were horrified by Europe's plague procurement methods. Cities literally

auctioned off dead bodies to the highest bidder for mass burial. Venetian merchants

sold plague victim belongings in markets while corpses rotted nearby. They hired criminals

to collect bodies because nobody else would do it. One Persian physician wrote that Europeans

treated human remains like livestock at auction. The desperation was so extreme they

started paying grave robbers to steal bodies from other cities when their own burial grounds

overflowed. Death had become Europe's most profitable business.