This is a lecture delivered for an undergraduate class to introduce students to some aspects of the study of epidemic disease in history and the present coronavirus pandemic. I begin with some considerations about the plague in Athens in the 5th century BC and the Black Death in Europe in the 14th century, subjects which I also covered briefly in my 2020 book, "The Fury of Covid-19: The Politics, Histories, and Unrequited Love of the Coronavirus" (Pan Macmillan, 2020). From there I move to some considerations about the Bubonic Plague of 1896 that struck India and the Influenza epidemic of 1918-20, but the lecture also devotes some attention to how artists through history have engaged with the question of plague and epidemic disease. I then suggest why indeed the present pandemic is "unprecedented"--not just in our lifetime but in history even if plagues and epidemic disease have unfailingly struck from time to time. The 'unprecedented' nature of the pandemic lies in in the global response to the pandemic more than in anything else. The treatment is, naturally, perfunctory and meant to be illustrative, rather than even remotely exhaustive.