The black death past and present. 2. Some historical problems.

This paper looks, from a historian's point of view, at the black death and the epidemics of plague which succeeded it in Europe from the fourteenth to the seventeenth centuries. It identifies the controversial questions, of medical as well as historical interest, which have been raised by recent work. These include the origins of plague epidemics, the role of rodents and insect vectors in them, and the reasons for their disappearance from western Europe.