The black death: A problem of population-wide infection.

This anomaly, though already known has received little attention;1 neither Ziegler nor Gottfried, writing in 1969 and 1983 respectively, questioned the bubonic plague assumption.2 Shrewsbury’s detailed history of bubonic plague in the British Isles in 1971 did little to explore the problems of plague in a cold temperate climate.3 Indeed, so fixed was he upon the rat-flea plague model that he discarded some material which could not be fitted to it. His arguments were further weakened by his views of rodent ecology. Morris was critical of Shrewsbury, especially his refusal to give greater weight to the part played by pneumonic plague, preferring typhus instead, but neither author gave adequate attention to the factors that limit the diffusion of that form of plague.4