Spread by fleas, it devastated the continent and killed nearly half the population. But the plague’s origins are much older than previously thought. Scientists just found a strain of the disease ...

Evidence from 13th-century chroniclers and physicians indicates plague may have been involved in epidemics a century before the Black Death, a new study shows. Yersinia pestis, the bacterium that ...

Millions of rats were killed and in 2 months no new cases of plague were reported. Bubonic plague, or "the black death," had raged throughout Europe and Asia over the past centuries. In the ...

The plague first hit British shores in 1348 after being spread to Europe by fleas on rats aboard ships from Asia. Scientists estimate that between a third and a half of Britain’s population were ...