The plague

[??!]

Are the black death and the plague the same thing?

[Quizmonster]

The particular plague which ravaged Europe in the 14th century was named 'The Black Death'...so, yes, basically.

[jno]

the last big plague to hit London was in 1665, just before the great fire; it was bubonic plague. I believe there's some doubt about whether the Black Death in the 14th century was the same - some historians think it may have been anthrax or something else. It was much worse - a third or maybe more of the population died.

[ugly_bob]

the plague is the illness (or group of illnesses), the black death was a particular outbreak, as QM says in the 14th Century

[Octavius]

The initial 14th-century European event was called the "Great Mortality" by contemporary writers and, with later outbreaks, became known as the "Black Death" because of a striking symptom of the disease, called acral necrosis, in which sufferers' skin would blacken due to subdermal haemorrhages. Historical records have convinced most scientists that the Black Death was an outbreak of bubonic plague.

[southerngirl]

Further to earlier answers, The Black Death refers to the first big plague epidemic but there have been others since and it still occurs in Asia and United States in various places. There are two types of plague, bubonic as described above and pneumonic. Bubonic plague is so called because people got big lumps or Buboles under their armpits, in the groin etc. This form of plague was a slower killer than pneumonic plague which can kill in 24 hours or so and has a higher fatality rate.

[jno]

http://www.answers.com/topic/black-death - there's a bit about halfway down about other theories of what caused the Black Death. In particular, the objection that although it affected Iceland badly, there were no rats there at the time.

[Peter Pedant]

yup jno has hit the biggie...

Everyone thinks that the Black Death was plague - but the records were so sparse at the time, and also they didnt record the things we want to know that there may be some doubt.

The big thing is that the rats should come out and die a littlebefore the humans start dying and this is most definitely NOT recorded. Rat fall is apparently characteristic and does not occur in any other disease.

[Peter Pedant]

oh and it cant occur now a days as rattus rattus - the black rat has been replaced by r norvegicus which has a different rat flea.

you need xenopsylla cheopsis and that doesnt live on r norvegicus

[mike b]

seem to remember reading that the !4th -century plague wasn't actually called the Black death until several centuries later...

[Quizmonster]

The name 'the Black Death' was coined in the 1820s specifically to refer to the pandemic disease that swept through Europe in the 1340s. Prior to that, this particular scourge had been called the pestilence, the plague and a variety of other names.
Yes, there have been similar catastrophes involving the same disease or similar ones, but the fact remains - apropos the question actually asked here - that The Plague and The Black Death are one and the same.

[new_squizza]

also, the great plague originated from marmots in siberia. their fleas infected rats which carried the disease all the way across europe.

...it's true, stephen fry told me last week!

[heathfield]

The Black Death was certainly a plague, but a plague is not necessarily the Black Death.

[Reader]

A List of National Epidemics of Plague in England 1348-1665 at http://www.urbanrim.org.uk/plague%20list.htm See also http://www.urbanrim.org.uk/diseases.htm