Notes to Pages 66–70 • 315- In mid-seventeenth-century England, infant mortality claimed 150 – 200 per
1 , 000 live births. Conrad et al.,The Western Medical Tradition, 215. Ann G. Carmichael,
Plague and the Poor in Renaissance Florence(New York, 1986 ), discusses the mix of other
diseases along with plague in Florence’s plague epidemics. The question of whether
plague and another illness struck the same individuals and how this affected mortality
rates remains to be examined. The Bills of Mortality and other sources in 1665 list only
one cause of death. - Josselin,Diary, 516 – 17 , Mar. 12 ,Apr. 19 , 1665 ; Boghurst,Loimographia, 29 ; Hodges,
Loimologia, 14 – 15. - The various views of the causes of plague can be followed most easily in Wear,
Knowledge and Practice, 281 – 313. The distinction between “religious” and “medical” views
of plague in early modern England and France is made clear in the work of Paul Slack
and Colin Jones, respectively. The sharpest drawing of the lines is found in Carlo Ci-
polla’s little classic,Faith, Reason, and the Plague in Seventeenth-Century Tuscany,trans.
Muriel Kittel (New York, 1979 ), where the magistrates are pitted against clerical hostil-
ity to public health measures that interfere with religious sensibilities. However, Cipolla
shows some blurring of the lines by a few individuals. Vivian Nutton, by contrast, has
demonstrated a remarkable agreement on medical understanding of plague across post-
Reformation confessional lines. Nutton, “Religion and Medicine in Reformation Eu-
rope” (paper presented to the Rutgers, Princeton and Philadelphia Early Modern His-
torians, Princeton, N.J., Apr. 2000 ).
It is possible that there was more fluidity in Protestant-dominated English culture
than in some continental Catholic cultures, but considerable flexibility in French Cath-
olic circles, including borrowing from Protestant writers, has been detected by Alison
Klairmont, “The Problem of the Plague: New Challenges to Healing in Sixteenth-
Century France,”Proceedings of the Western Society for French History 5 ( 1977 ): 119 – 27. - Patrick,Works, 3 : 669 – 72.
- Hodges concludes, logically: “In this Contagion before us... it is sufficient for
the purpose of the physician to assigne natural and obvious Causes; and where such is
discoverable it is unworthy of him and the divine Art he possesses, as well as an Affront
to good sense, to have recourse to any other.” Hodges,Loimologia, 30 – 31. - John Gadbury,Londons Deliverance Predicted, showing the Causes of Plagues ...and
when the present PESTmay abate(London, 1665 ), A 6 ; Bernard Capp,English Almanacs,
1500 – 1800 : Astrology and the Popular Press(Ithaca, N.Y., 1979 ), 36. - John Allin to Philip Fryth, Sept. 20 , 1665 , ESRO FRE 5468.
- Lady Ranelagh’s handwritten treatise is at the Royal Society Library (RSL),
Boyle Papers 14 , fols. 28 – 42. Robert Boyle’s views on plague are revealed in correspond-
ence with the secretary of the Royal Society, Henry Oldenburg. RSL Letter Book Sup-
plement, 1663 – 93 , 2 : 36 – 56. On the Boyle family, see Barbara Beigun Kaplan,“Divulging
Useful Truths in Physick”: The Medical Agenda of Robert Boyle(Baltimore, 1993 ), 9 – 16. - Much of Richard Kephale’s Medela Pestilentiae(London, 1665 ) was lifted from a
work by Stephen Bradwell, published in 1636. On Bradwell, see Slack,The Impact of
Plague, 27 – 28.