In search of the plague. The Greek peninsula faces the black death, 14th to 19th centuries.

Histories of the plague are based on the belief that we can locate epidemics in the related sources and classify them according to present-day medical categories. This article rests upon the assumption that present day medical discourse which is based upon laboratory observation is totally incompatible with history which lacks analogous techniques in constructing its own discourse. It explores the possibilities and the limits of a history of the plague based upon the phenomenology of the disease as recorded in the sources that concern the period of the second pandemic of the plague.