306 • Notes to Pages 9–13supplemented on England by J. F. D. Shrewsbury,A History of Bubonic Plague in the
British Isles(Cambridge, 1970 ), which tends to leap to diagnostic conclusions in distin-
guishing between plague and alternative diseases.
21. Amelang,Journal of the Plague Year.
22. Biraben,Les hommes et la peste, 1 : 186 – 87 , 213 – 18 , including table 3 on Barcelona.
23. Slack,The Impact of Plague, 150 – 51 , 376 nn. 20 – 21. See also Ian Sutherland, “When
Was the Great Plague? Mortality in London, 1563 to 1665 ,” in Population and Social
Change,ed. D. V. Glass and Roger Revelle (London, 1972 ), 287 – 320.
24. “As about one fifth of the whole people died in the great Plague-years, so two
other fifth parts fled.” John Graunt,Natural and Political Observations made upon the
Bills of Mortality(Oxford, 1665 ), 44.
25. There is a superb volume of relevant essays on early modern diseases by specialists
in a variety of disciplines. We have used the French edition:Histoire de la pensée médicale
en Occident,ed. Mirko D. Grmek, vol. 2 ,De la Renaissance aux Lumières(Paris, 1999 ).
See esp. the essay by Henri Mollaret, “Les grands fléaux,” 253 – 78. See also the excellent
multinational collection of conference essays Maladies et société (XIIe–XVIIIe siècles),ed.
Neithard Bulst and Robert Delort (Paris, 1989 ).
26. Carmichael,Plague and the Poor, 90 – 93 , summarizes different findings by his-
torians.
27. Henri Mollaret and his late colleague at the Pasteur Institute in Paris, Jacqueline
Brossolet, pioneered the exploration of plague through the prism of art from the time of
past epidemics. Their trailblazing work,La peste: Source méconnue d ’inspiration artis-
tique,was published as an offprint from Annuaire du Musée royal des Beaux-Arts d ’Anvers
( 1965 ), 3 – 112. Brossolet’s fascinating retrospective on this innovative venture and the en-
suing battle with skeptics within the medical profession is in the preface of Christine
M. Boeckl,Images of Plague and Pestilence: Iconography and Iconology(Kirksville, Mo.,
2000 ), x–xiv.
28. Luke 16 : 19 – 31.
29. See Slack,The Impact of Plague, 299.
30. Giulia Calvi,Histories of a Plague Year: The Social and the Imaginary in Baroque
Florence,trans. Dario Biocca and Bryant T. Ragan Jr. (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1989 ),
195 – 96.
31. A rare exception was the ritual execution of a health official and a barber during
Milan’s 1630 epidemic. Confessing under torture of smearing plague poison around the
city, the two men were executed, their bodies burned, the ashes thrown into the river,
and the house where they had “plotted” replaced by a “column of infamy.” This incident
and a contemporary engraving were part of an exhibit at the Wellcome Institute for the
History of Medicine in 1985. The Wellcome Library’s guide,The Pest Anatomized: Five
Centuries of Plague in Western Europe,is a superb introduction to the history of plague,
including public health measures.
32. John Henderson, “Epidemics in Renaissance Florence: Medical Theory and
Government Response,” in Bulst and Delort,Maladies et société, 175 – 86. A useful guide
to Italian plague facilities and measures is Brian Pullan, “Support and Redeem: Charity