This is the abstract and bibliography of works cited for the 2026 Garrison Lecture, presented at the annual meeting of the American Association for the History of Medicine meeting. The Lecture--entitled "Straining the History of Infectious Diseases: Europe's Two Black Deaths"--proposes that new evidence on the evolutionary and physical history of Yersinia pestis, the bacterium that causes plague, can now be combined with archaeological evidence and new readings of old written sources to create an entirely new understanding of the early stages of the Second Plague Pandemic. Specifically, it is argued here that plague was present in Europe more than half a century before the traditional dates of the Black Death (1347/48). In this earlier period, it was largely categorized as a type of poisoning, which is why its presence has hitherto been imperceptible. Once evidence is assembled, it becomes clear not only that plague was likely involved in several mass mortality events (including episodes of mass death during the Great Famine of 1315-17), but that it likely sparked waves of persecutions against individuals and groups accused of well-poisoning.
Monica H. Green (Sat,) studied this question.