History of Public Health

The modernization of the city of Craiova at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century began with difficulty and alternated, with periods of rapid progress followed by stagnation. Or, in the conditions of increasing the number of population but also of its necessities, it was necessary, for the communal administration, to start the development and modernization projects of Craiova. The following were included in this line: the construction of the communal slaughterhouse starting with 1892, being improved in the following years and the construction of the refrigeration installations. These two achievements would have a particularly beneficial impact on the constant meat supply of the population.
In addition, there were a number of reports drawn up by the doctors represented on the Council aimed at clarifying some issues that went beyond the competences of the other members. Such a unique example,
discovered within the County Service of National Archives, Dolj branch, is reported in 1908 by veterinarian Vucol Augustin who does not radiographically reveal the sanitary-veterinary situation of Craiova with the
possibility of deciphering the evolution of public health in the city.
Modernizarea orașului Craiova la sfârșitul secolului al XIX-le și începutul secolului XX a început anevoios și a alternat, cu perioade de progres rapid urmate de stagnare. Ori, în condițiile creșterii numărului populației dar și a necesităților acesteia, se impunea administrației comunale demararea
proiectelor de dezvoltare și modernizare ale Craiovei. Pe această linie s-au înscris: construirea Abatorului comunal începând cu anul 1892, fiind îmbunătățit în anii următori și construirea instalațiilor frigorifere.
Aceste două realizări aveau să aibă un impact deosebit de benefic asupra alimentării constante cu carne a populației. Pe lângă acestea au existat o serie de rapoarte întocmite de medicii reprezentați în Consiliu care aveau
menirea de a clarifica unele aspect ce depășeau competențele celorlalți membri. Un astfel de exemplu, inedit, descoperit în cadrul Serviciului Județean al Arhivelor Naționale, filiala Dolj, este raportul pe anul
1908 al medicului veterinar Vucol Augustin care ne dezvăluie radiografic situația sanitar-veterinară a orașului Craiova cu posibilitatea descifrării evoluției sănătății publice din oraș.

Drawing on rich ethnographic and historical intertwinements, Making and Unmaking Public Health in Africa maps the ongoing construction of Global Public Health, while simultaneously debating the Public in public health and pinpointing the spread of new global health landscapes.
The introduction by Ruth Prince excels in mapping the complex history of health actions in Africa and the links between local and transnational settings. It brings to the
fore the role of political contexts and economic changes, from imperial blueprints to the centralised socialist plans of the early post-independence period, and the role of the
1980s Structural Adjustment Programmes that paved the way for present-day neoliberal approaches to views of health programmes.

Paper delivered at the University of Michigan history department's graduate conference. This paper describes the tensions between established, white gay AIDS service providers and African American AIDS activists as the extent of the AIDS epidemic among the city's communities of color became clear during the middle of the 1980s, leading to the establishment of Blacks Educating Blacks About Sexual Health Issues (BEBASHI), the nation's first black AIDS service organization.

Objetivos: contribuir a la investigación sobre la vinculación entre la política sanitaria de profilaxis venérea y el proceso de producción, importación y circulación de medicamentos para el tratamiento de los “males secretos” durante el siglo xx en Argentina. Desarrollo: desde 1936 el Estado desplegó una política de profilaxis venérea que otorgó prerrogativas a los grupos privados para la producción e importación de fármacos. Mientras el Departamento Nacional de Higiene promovió un tratamiento estandarizado de las dolencias, los laboratorios privados usaron publicidades para construir, ampliar y segmentar el mercado consumidor. En este artículo destacamos cómo el mensaje de las propagandas de medicamentos contra las dolencias de transmisión sexual en las revistas médicas tenía como fin transformar a los galenos en agentes de recomendación de dichos productos. Conclusiones: el tratamiento estandarizado impuesto por la burocracia sanitaria estimuló la producción, importación y oferta de fármacos de laboratorios nacionales y extranjeros. Los anuncios publicitarios apelaron al galeno como portador de un criterio legítimo para el consumo de medicamentos. Los laboratorios  nanciaron revistas de grupos de galenos con el fin de ampliar el consumo de sus productos entre los pacientes de estos.

ORGANIZATIONAL AND LEGISLATIVE ACTIVITIES OF THE SOVIET AUTHORITIES ON ESTABLISHING OF THE HEALTHCARE SYSTEM IN THE UKRAINIAN SSR (IN 1920s).

The article deals with the policy of the Communist Party and the Ukrainian SSR's government in the sphere of public health. In the 1920s, the Bolsheviks tried to organize their own structure of health protection. From 1918 on they were shaping a system of the state control over the
healthcare. Legal acts of Soviet Russia were used as a pattern in the process of establishment of public healthcare in Ukraine. During the 1920s, the Soviet authorities passed many legislative acts regulating process of forming and functioning of the central and local agencies. Institutional and management structure which was organized in the early 1920s developed under the influence of different political, social and economic phenomena such as war or administrative reforms. The transformation from the "military communism" to the new economic policy and then to the planned economy exerted huge influence on the structure of public healthcare management. Such new tasks as e.g. control over private medical practice and drug trade or forming plans of public healthcare's development and its integration into state economic plans required appropriate changes in the structure of people's commissariat and local agencies. By the end of the 1920s
the Soviet government successfully realized the idea of
subordinating all branches of the healthcare system to the "single management".

Key words: healthcare system, Ukrainian SSR, healthcare management, legislative acts, the new economic policy, 1920s

On the second half of the 19th century, Lisbon started to change at an accelerated pace, regarding population growth, urban area increase and industrialization. Although the intensity of these changes cannot be directly compared with the ones occurring more or less at the same time in other European capitals (due to its lesser dimension), they were most useful as a springboard for deeper changes that came only in the 20th century. One of the aspects on those changes was the appearance of a larger number of small industries in several areas of the city. Due to their location and characteristics, they were not always compatible either with the basic structures for handling urban sewage or with public health needs. One of the document series belonging to the archival fond of the Ministério do Reino contains several records related to industrial licensing inside the city and show several aspects of pollution inside the urban space. By identifying and analyzing these records, it is possible to understand the ways by which industry, urban sewage disposal and public health intersected each other.

Depuis le Moyen Âge, les ravages provoqués par les épidémies dites "importées" ont conduit à la mise en place de quarantaines partout en Europe. Ces dispositifs préventifs, qui consistent à retenir personnes et marchandises suspectées d’être contaminées, a cependant été appliqué de manière inégale selon les régions. Au XIXe siècle, la réduction des quarantaines dans de nombreux pays européens s’explique notamment par un contrôle renforcé autour de la Méditerranée.

Au cours des cinquante premières années du XIXe siècle, commence une volonté d’engagement sanitaire de l’Etat dans l’enseignement secondaire et primaire, bien avant la concrétisation et l’aboutissement de l’hygiène scolaire au cours de la Troisième République. En se préoccupant d’instaurer l’enseignement, le ministère de l’Instruction publique se charge d’améliorer les conditions de vie des élèves et la sauvegarde de leur santé. Nous avons étudié l’engagement hygiénique de l’Etat et les mises en application des décisions étatiques en relation avec les possibilités et propositions locales. Même si nombreuses des nouvelles instructions sanitaires restent encore à appliquer dans les années 1850 à tous les établissements scolaires, l’hygiène à l’école rentre dans les priorités de l’Etat dès les années 1830 à la fois pour l’enseignement secondaire et primaire.

This article will challenge the currently accepted notions of weak British consular presence, influence and activity in the southern Mediterranean during the period 1795–1832 through a case study of the careers of three successive consuls in the Regency of Tripoli: Simon Lucas, William Wass Langford and Hanmer Warrington. Utilising the official correspondence of these agents, the extent of the consular bridgehead in the capital, Tripoli, will be investigated, and how, through these consular and diplomatic agents, it served to define imperial interests and activity at the frontiers of empire. Moreover, the overlapping personal and professional networks within which the consuls embedded themselves, the role of enterprising missions and the development of an intelligence-gathering network will be of central significance in understanding the consequent ruptures in the social and political fabric of the Regency of Tripoli. British imperial interest in North Africa during and immediately post the Napoleonic era remains under-studied and misunderstood within both British diplomatic and imperial history. This article challenges the existing literature that underestimates the diplomatic as well as consular power exercised by the British consuls to Algiers, Tunis and Tripoli, as well as the importance of these three Barbary regencies to wider strategic interests in the Mediterranean.

Ondanks dat het verblijf in een sanatorium ingrijpend moet zijn geweest voor kinderen - zij werden minimaal een half jaar bij hun ouders weggehaald - is tot op heden niet onderzocht welke invloed dit verblijf was. In dit onderzoek wordt aandacht besteed aan de ervaringen van sanatoriumpatiënten tussen de nul en achttien jaar. Hoe hebben zij dit verblijf ervaren, en welke factoren waren hierop van invloed?

Door middel van analyse van zowel memoires, dagboeken, documentaires en gedenkboeken is gepoogd een zo goed mogelijk beeld te krijgen van het kindperspectief.

The aim of this manuscript is to highlight the contribution of the first two
generations of physicians who faced malnutrition in Chile, between the end of nineteenth century and the first decades of the twentieth century. In the history of Chilean medicine, there is a paucity of research about the role of these physicians in the fight against malnutrition. The main interest was centered in the forties of the twentieth century and the first policies and actions for the working class feeding have been overlooked. The existence of two pioneering groups that have common elements and differences to face the problem of under nutrition is established.

Public health has always been a constant concern for any society. It is not surprising, therefore, that everywhere, from far back in time, we recognise institutions aimed at preserving it and apparatuses which were entrusted with the task of controlling the behaviour of the population. Protecting public health meant protecting people and animals from epidemics, but it also meant public hygiene, food quality and individual health. A highly significant topic that the essays published here deal with from the Middle Ages to the present day, focusing both on emergency situations (epidemic management) and on the organisation and control of everyday life, with the awareness that one of the most important operations of social discipline was carried out through health police measures.
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La sanità è stata da sempre una costante preoccupazione per qualsiasi società. Non stupisce pertanto che ovunque, da epoche molto risalenti, si riconoscano istituzioni volte a tutelarla e apparati cui era affidato il compito di controllare i comportamenti della popolazione. Tutelare la sanità pubblica voleva dire salvaguardare uomini e animali dalle epidemie, ma significava anche igiene pubblica, qualità delle derrate alimentari, salute individuale. Un mondo di grande interesse che i saggi qui pubblicati affrontano dal Medioevo all’età contemporanea, portando l’attenzione tanto sui momenti di emergenza (gestione delle epidemie) quando sull’organizzazione e il controllo della quotidianità, nella consapevolezza che attraverso le misure di polizia sanitaria si sia svolta una delle massime operazioni di disciplinamento sociale.

Objective:  This paper intends to evaluate inflammatory proteins and
hematological factors  concurrently blood obtained during the
cupping and with the venous blood.
Methods:  About 30 samples of 10 men participated in this clinical
evaluative study aged between 23 and 58 years. The hematological
factors were evaluated by by KX-. Cytokines (IL-10) &  hs-CRP were
measured by a sensitive sandwich ELISA kit.
Results:  Analysis of the results showed  a significant difference  in
many of the inflammatory proteins, hematological factors between
the venous blood and the cupping blood.
Conclusion: Based on the results of the comparison between venous
blood and cupping blood, the cupping blood is different, both in
components and immunologic response.

Founded in March 1946, Harlem, New York’s Lafargue Mental Hygiene Clinic was the first outpatient psychiatric clinic established in and for a black community in the United States. The result of a collaboration among the psychiatrist and social critic Dr. Fredric Wertham, writer Richard Wright, and clergyman Rev. Shelton Hale Bishop, the clinic was both a practical response to the need for low-cost psychotherapy and counseling for black residents of New York City (many of whom were newly-arrived migrants) and a radical precursor to nation-wide campaigns to address disparities in the mental healthcare of African Americans. This article places the Lafargue Clinic’s history and legacy in conversation with the fraught role of race in the history of psychotherapy—fraught in the sense of how concepts of race and practices of racism have played a determining role in how established American psychiatry has approached the treatment of racialized populations and how these populations have experienced their encounters and/or exclusions from psychiatric mental healthcare.

El trabajo analiza las discusiones y sus consecuencias legales y sanitarias acerca de la abolición del sistema reglamentarista del negocio prostibulario en la Argentina. La hipótesis que lo sustenta es que si bien hacia los años treinta se cimienta un consenso acerca de la amenaza para el acervo racial que constituye la prostitución, en tanto principal propagadora de las enfermedades venéreas, su consideración como mal necesario dificulta un acuerdo acerca de la instauración del sistema abolicionista. Esta tensión entre criterios sanitarios y morales da lugar, durante algunos años de la década peronista, a la puesta en práctica de un sistema neoreglamentarista que, de todos modos, será reemplazado nuevamente por otro abolicionista luego de 1955.

Ebola? SARS? Recent threats to public health threats conjure up fears that link us to our ancestors. Although virological advances hold the prospect of cure, the most effective strategies to prevent the spread of virulent viruses continue to rely upon past practices of quarantine and cordons sanitaire.

This essay maps recent scholarly trends in the study of early modern women as healthcare practitioners and provides a general introduction to the special issue of Renaissance Studies titled "Women and Healthcare in Early Modern Europe" (Vol. 28, no. 4, Sept. 2014).

https://www.amazon.com/Plagues-upon-Earth-Princeton-Economic/dp/069119212X/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=

https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691192123/plagues-upon-the-earth

Plagues upon the Earth is a monumental history of humans and their germs. Weaving together a grand narrative of global history with insights from cutting-edge genetics, Kyle Harper explains why humanity’s uniquely dangerous disease pool is rooted deep in our evolutionary past, and why its growth is accelerated by technological progress. He shows that the story of disease is entangled with the history of slavery, colonialism, and capitalism, and reveals the enduring effects of historical plagues in patterns of wealth, health, power, and inequality. He also tells the story of humanity’s escape from infectious disease—a triumph that makes life as we know it possible, yet destabilizes the environment and fosters new diseases.

Panoramic in scope, Plagues upon the Earth traces the role of disease in the transition to farming, the spread of cities, the advance of transportation, and the stupendous increase in human population. Harper offers a new interpretation of humanity’s path to control over infectious disease—one where rising evolutionary threats constantly push back against human progress, and where the devastating effects of modernization contribute to the great divergence between societies. The book reminds us that human health is globally interdependent—and inseparable from the well-being of the planet itself.

Putting the COVID-19 pandemic in perspective, Plagues upon the Earth tells the story of how we got here as a species, and it may help us decide where we want to go.

This chapter argues against the received view of "pre-Malthusian" demographic thought as blindly optimistic and ignorant or dismissive of natural limits to growth. Setting aside the optimism/pessimism binary and the focus on radical Enlightenment attitudes toward demographic growth that often shape historical studies of Malthus, it focuses instead on the conceptual structure of English demographic thinking over the long term. It argues that a complex and evolving combination of providential and naturalistic thinking characterized much English writing on population in the early modern period, supplying the context for demographic quantification ("political arithmetic") in the seventeenth century and for new thinking about the scope of effective political intervention in demographic processes in the eighteenth. Closing with an examination of successive editions of Malthus's Essay on the Principle of Population, it argues that the Malthus's key departure from this early modern tradition (in contrast to his disagreements with Condorcet, Price and other eighteenth-century radicals) was not his naturalism, pessimism, or awareness of limits, but rather his application of Smithian political economy to the problem of human interaction with the forces of nature.

Abstract— nowadays, it is essential for medical professionals to organize and keep track of their patients’ medical records. Keeping this kind of information is absolutely not an easy task, especially with a numerous amount of records and other documents that need to be filled, which are usually in rows of labeled folders in file cabinets. The lack in automated electronic medical recordkeeping is apparently more in the field of pediatrics. The growing influence of mobile phones, computers or technology as a whole, along with the advances in medical devices, are becoming a crucial part in the future of healthcare. All kind of technology driven devices are creating their way towards becoming essential tools in offices of medical practitioners. Furthermore, with these tools and equipment, record keeping of medical information of patients could be made more productive, convenient and fuller in content, not only including pictures but video and audio records as well.
Telemedicine is a generic term which is used to characterize various aspects of health care at a distance. In its most expansive application, telemedicine can be defined as the use of telecommunication technologies to provide medical information and services. The key aspect of telemedicine is the use of electronic signals to transfer information from one site to another. The term, telemedicine, is becoming most recognized as referring to remote clinical care and consultation through the use of electronic equipment that provides with images. By using Telemedicine technologies and a well-planned timeline, the SERENITY APP has successfully drawn down its hospitals complement. Telemedicine services that integrate electronic medical records can decrease the number of cases where doctors cannot access the records of patients. According to the Institute of Medicine, around 30% of physicians could not have accessed their patient's files in existing non-telemedicine systems and about 70% of the records were deficient.
Key Words: Telemedicine, Technologies, Telecommunication,  Institute of Medicine.

In 2020, the Turkish Thoracic Society started a petition demanding the renovation and re-use of the nonoperating sanatorium in Heybeliada Istanbul, as a pandemic hospital including a medical history museum. Along with its potential role in the struggle against the Corona pandemic, the complex is a cultural heritage as well, testifying for the collaborative modernization of architecture and medicine. These two fields concurrently emerged as modern disciplines in the nation-building years of the Turkish republic, a period marked with the regime’s efforts to disintegrate the image of “the sick man of Europe”. The ruling officials, a majority of which were medical graduates influenced by Social Darwinism, identified physical weakness and sickness with moral corruption and treason, which led to a strong emphasis on the struggle against medical diseases, Tuberculosis (TB) in particular. While the architects and physicians borrowed techniques and terminology from each other, the traditional spatial elements such as caged windows and the extensive use of decorative textiles in interiors were condemned as potential causes of TB. Along with public hygiene propaganda, sanatoria and dispensary construction had been high-priority projects. This paper examines the foundation and development period of the first pandemic hospital in Turkey, Heybeliada Sanatorium as a product of modern architecture as well as a tool for socio-cultural transformation. Through periodicals and official publications, the paper further focuses on representations of sanatoria and the position of medical institutions as mediums of state-initiated modernization. Moreover, it discusses how this particular facility resonated with the biopolitical discourse of the regime and set a precedent for the subsequent medical institutions.

The International Health Division lost its central influence in the Rockefeller Foundation, and that this loss affected the way we understand nutrition and the outcome of the Green Revolution today.
The Green Revolution claimed to offer a solution to the “Problem of Nutrition, ”the name that the League of Nations gave to a number of problems around food, public health, and agriculture in the mid-1930s.The problem was partly forgotten during the war, but, as I contend in this first approach to the period, research on nutrition continued during the war. Moreover, the answer to that problem offered by international postwar agencies like the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) can be traced to the Rockefeller Foundation’s early work in one of its main “laboratories”: Mexico.

Perspectives on health from the Bible such as biblical anthropology and the laws of God, as a basis for health and disease dynamics, are receiving support from science. Biblical anthropology teaches that a human being is a whole person, with physical, mental, social, ecological and spiritual dimensions. The body is not the opposite of the soul, it is its visible expression. One dimension affects the other dimensions, because a human being is a unit. Scientific studies show many connections between mind and body, such as aerobic exercise and memory, the effect of one body system on another, and even spirituality and disease. Health and disease are the result of obedience or disobedience to God's laws. Research in the area of behavioral epidemiology shows links between lifestyle and diseases such as cancer and heart disease. Biblical perspectives provide a useful theoretical framework for public health practice and research. Science and faith have traditionally been in disagreement, and they often appear not reconcilable with each other. Although both are ways to acquire knowledge and find truth, they are different in their assumptions and their methodology. However, they are beginning to come together in the field of health. The impact of religion on health has begun to be explored. How is it possible that a religious book such the Bible, the foundation for the Christian religion, written between 1500 BC and 100 AD, can have relevance for the twenty-first century, in a science-based, contemporary world? The objective of this paper is to show how biblical perspectives on health and disease dynamics are receiving support from the scientific field. Biblical perspectives about health corroborated by science would not only confirm Christian faith, but also could be a valuable and current source for health promotion, and could provide a theoretical framework for research, and for integrating health and faith.

Noxious airs from trash discards, irrigation canals, marketplaces, hospitals, and plazas vitiated colonial Lima’s environment. Using olfactory history, this article examines how residents reacted to their pungent environs. Early modern Iberians believed that foul smells were harmful. Fully understanding this relationship, municipal leaders subjugated the San La ́zaro district by relocating its indigenous population and moving noxious trades and institutions to the area. I argue that the concentration of miasmas in San La ́zaro represents an environmental conquest. San La ́zaro’s ethnically and socially diverse population lived with unhealthy airs that threatened their health. By contrast, central Lima enjoyed fresher airs in locations primarily occupied by Spanish vecinos (male, landowning citizens, who were allowed to participate in local politics) in and around the Plaza de Armas, the cathedral, the viceroy’s palace, and the municipal hall. The protection of central Lima’s airs reveals that environmental management corresponded to social status and political power.

Die Unterdrückung und Verzerrung von Mitgefühl und das Ersetzen von Gewissen durch „Pflicht“ in der Zeit der nationalsozialistischen Herrscha  ist gerade bei Ärzten, für die Empathie die Grundlage des Handelns darstellt, bis heute schwer begreifbar. Die Verstrickung und die Täterschaft  vieler Ärzte und ärztlicher Organisationen in die Verbrechen der NS-Zeit wurden nach einer langen Zeit des Verschweigens inzwischen mehr und mehr aufgearbeitet und öffentlich gemacht.

A vivid recreation of how the governors and governed of early seventeenth-century Florence confronted, suffered, and survived a major epidemic of plague

SURVIVING PLAGUE IN AN EARLY MODERN CITY – FLORENCE UNDER SIEGE BY JOHN HENDERSON

In Florence Under Siege: Surviving Plague in an Early Modern City, John Henderson examines how a major city fought, suffered and survived the impact of plague. Going beyond traditional oppositions between rich and poor, this book provides a nuanced and more compassionate interpretation of government policies in practice, by recreating the very human reactions and survival strategies of families and individuals at all levels of society.

Wider Implications
Each age faces the challenge of new diseases from cholera to AIDS and Ebola, but plague remains the paradigm against which reactions to epidemics are often judged. Early modern Italy, famous as the birthplace of the Renaissance, has long been portrayed as having developed public health policies which formed the basis of models developed in later centuries. This book, while focussing on seventeenth-century Florence, examines the Tuscan capital within a wider Italian and European context to assess the effect and real impact of these policies on the city, the neighbourhood, street and family. Writing in a vivid and approachable way, this book unearths the forgotten stories of doctors and administrators struggling to cope with the sick and dying, and the impact of plague on individuals and families through the personal diaries of the literate to the verbatim testimony in court cases of the poorer levels of society.

Official Reactions
Many histories of public health concentrate on chronicling government policies, whereas here equal emphasis is placed on the lived experience. Underpinning this narrative is a vivid recreation of the stories and experiences of individuals who endured and survived the epidemic. Contemporary political and medical rhetoric often blamed disproportionately the lower levels of society as the spreaders and even cause of plague, but official measures are examined to establish their real impact on the whole population. These included the cordon sanitaire along the frontiers of the Tuscan state; sanitary surveys of the living conditions of the poor; inspection and locking up of infected houses. A range of treatments are examined from the plague doctor’s prescribing of the ‘miraculous’ drug of Theriac to the surgeons’ lancing of buboes to the complex recipes devised by empirics.

Lazaretti or Isolation Hospitals
Lazaretti or vast, crowded isolation hospitals above all served to distinguish many Italian cities from their northern European counterparts. Some cities built new structures, but many took over existing buildings, as in the case of Florence, where the beautiful Romanesque convent and church of San Miniato al Monte on the hill overlooking Florence to the south of the river Arno became the city’s major Lazaretto. Together with the other Lazaretti around the city, San Miniato housed and treated over 10,000 people during the epidemic of 1630 to 1631, but did, as was claimed at the time, they lead to a reduction in mortality? or simply provide a convenient way for the poor to be enclosed?

Religion
Religious strategies also form an important theme of this book, reflecting contemporary belief in the necessity to placate divine ire at the sins of Mankind, through prayers and public masses. But elaborate processions with holy relics were an integral part of the ceremonial response. How far did this lead to conflict with the health board officers given the perceived threat of the spread of disease when large numbers collected together?  The plague in Florence also led to the commissioning of major works of art and architecture from the Medici Grand-ducal family to the more and less affluent, as they paid for chapels, altarpieces, and silver and wax votive offerings. This truly inter-disciplinary study examines these commissions and asks how far the iconography of votive saints in Tuscany, such as St. Sebastian and San Rocco, have in common or differ from other parts of Italy.

Individual Experience and Survival Strategies
Florence Under Siege seeks above all to look behind the optimistic gloss of official printed accounts to examine individual experiences. It recreates the often moving and tragic narratives of the individuals who ran isolation hospitals, the doctors who treated plague victims, and above all of the ordinary men and women left bereft and confused by the sickness and death of family members.

Plague on Trial
Analysis of the large corpus of contemporary court records provides fascinating evidence of the numerous survival strategies through which individuals coped with the very real fear generated by a city under siege from an invisible enemy and how they attempted to side-step regulations in order to preserve their possessions and their normal way of life. Examination of detailed trials reveals not just the extraordinary variety of ‘crimes’, but also reveals greater compassion than suggested by the draconian punishments prescribed in law and thus helps to break down the traditional picture of the opposition of rich and poor, the governors and governed.

Chapter outline:
1. Plague and Public Health in Italy and Europe Plague and Italy’s Reputation in Europe Historians and Plague in Italy Plague in Florence: Themes and Sources

PART I, FLORENCE UNDER SIEGE: COPING WITH PLAGUE
2. The Invasion of Plague in Early Modern Italy Plague approaches Florence:
Border Controls and cordons sanitaires
Plague on the Outskirts of Florence, Summer 1630
Plague Mortality in the City, 1630–1

3. Medicine, the Environment and the Poor Doctors and Diagnosis: ‘A certain sickness with suspicion of contagion’
Preventive Measures and the Environment
‘Filth is the mother of corruption’: The Sanitary Survey, August 1630
Marginalisation of the Poor: ‘It was not the time to make the body of the city worse with such malign humours, the most inclined towards putrefaction’
Poverty and Charity: The Growth of ‘misery, necessity and sickness’

4.  Plague and Public Health: Treating the Body of the City and the Body of the Poor
Official Reactions in August Public Health and Prevention
The Control of Plague Doctors and Medicine: Treating the Body of the Poor

5. Fighting the Plague
The Spread and Impact of Plague
Coping with Death
Quarantine and the City
Quarantine and the Countryside

PART II, RELIGION, ISOLATION AND SURVIVAL

6. Religion in the Time of Plague
The Plague Approaches: The Church and Preventive Measures Plague at its Height and the Practice of Religion
Celebrating with Sant’Antonino: The Plague Relents
Plague, Religion and the Grand-Ducal Court: The Cult of Domenica da Paradiso
Religion and Quarantine: ‘Providing for the health of the soul is more important than [providing for the health] of the body’
SS. Annunziata and Plague
The Madonna dell’ Impruneta and the Return of Plague, 1633

7. Lazaretti and Isolation: ‘More feared than death itself’?
First Experiments and the Hospital of Messer Bonifazio
The New Isolation and Quarantine Centres Lazaretti: Form and Function
‘The medicines in this period play an important role’
Spiritual Medicine
Assessing Patient Mortality: ‘More feared than death itself’?
Life, Death and Serving the Poor Sick: ‘I desire that you pray God for me, because I am suffering under the heaviest of crosses’
Life in the Lazaretti: The Perspective of the Staff

8. Surviving Plague
Plague and the Law
Punishment and Enforcement
Prosecution: General Categories
Prosecuting the Popolo

EPILOGUE: THE RETURN AND END OF PLAGUE, 1632–3

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