In the fall of 1347, sailors from the port of Genoa in western Italy brought a new and virulent disease from the port of Caffa on the Black Sea (in present-day Ukraine) to Sicily. This disease, usually called the Black Death and identified as the bubonic plague, swept through Europe over the next four years. Contemporary sources said that sufferers complained of flulike symptoms, including aching joints, high fever, and swollen lymph nodes. If the patient survived long enough, the swollen nodes (or buboes) turned black, filling with infected blood. Death usually followed within three days.