An Urban History Of The Plague

Download or read book An Urban History of The Plague written by Karen Jillings and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-04-17 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As a medical, economic, spiritual and demographic crisis, plague affected practically every aspect of an early modern community whether on a local, regional or national scale. Its study therefore affords opportunities for the reassessment of many aspects of the pre-modern world. This book examines the incidence and effects of plague in an early modern Scottish community by analysing civic, medical and social responses to epidemics in the north-east port of Aberdeen, focusing on the period 1500–1650. While Aberdeen’s experience of plague was in many ways similar to that of other towns throughout Europe, certain idiosyncrasies in the city make it a particularly interesting case study, which challenges several assumptions about early modern mentalities.

Download or read book Plague and the City written by Lukas Engelmann and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-11-16 with total page 176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Plague and the City uncovers discourses of plague and anti-plague measures in the city during the medieval, early modern and modern periods, and explores the connection between plague and urban environments including attempts by professional bodies to prevent or limit the outbreak of epidemic disease. Bringing together leading scholars of plague working across different historical periods, this book provides an inter-disciplinary study of plague in the city across time and space. The chapters cover a wide range of periods, geographical locations and disciplinary approaches but all seek to answer significant questions, including whether common motives can be identified, and how far knowledge about plague was based on an understanding of the urban space. It also examines how maps and photographs contribute to understanding plague in the city through exploring the ways in which the relationship between plague and the urban environment has been visualised, from the poisoned darts of plague winging their way towards their victims in the votive pictures from the Renaissance, to the mapping of the spread of disease in late nineteenth-century Bombay and photographing Honolulu’s great plague fire in 1900. Containing a series of studies that illuminate plague’s urban connection as a key social and political concern throughout history, Plague and the City is ideal for students of early modern history, and of the early modern city and plague more specifically.

Download or read book Plague Ports written by Myron Echenberg and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2010-04 with total page 366 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reveals the global effects of the bubonic plague, and what we can learn from this earlier pandemic A century ago, the third bubonic plague swept the globe, taking more than 15 million lives. Plague Ports tells the story of ten cities on five continents that were ravaged by the epidemic in its initial years: Hong Kong and Bombay, the Asian emporiums of the British Empire where the epidemic first surfaced; Sydney, Honolulu and San Francisco, three “pearls” of the Pacific; Buenos Aires and Rio de Janeiro in South America; Alexandria and Cape Town in Africa; and Oporto in Europe. Myron Echenberg examines plague's impact in each of these cities, on the politicians, the medical and public health authorities, and especially on the citizenry, many of whom were recent migrants crammed into grim living spaces. He looks at how different cultures sought to cope with the challenge of deadly epidemic disease, and explains the political, racial, and medical ineptitudes and ignorance that allowed the plague to flourish. The forces of globalization and industrialization, Echenberg argues, had so increased the transmission of microorganisms that infectious disease pandemics were likely, if not inevitable. This fascinating, expansive history, enlivened by harrowing photographs and maps of each city, sheds light on urbanism and modernity at the turn of the century, as well as on glaring public health inequalities. With the recent outbreak of COVID-19, and ongoing fears of bioterrorism, Plague Ports offers a necessary and timely historical lesson.

Download or read book Plague, Pestilence and Pandemic: Voices from History written by Peter Furtado and published by Thames & Hudson. This book was released on 2021-05-11 with total page 424 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An eye-opening anthology from the bestselling editor of Histories of Nations, exploring how people around the globe have suffered and survived during plague and pandemic, from the ancient world to the present. Plague, pestilence, and pandemics have been a part of the human story from the beginning and have been reflected in art and writing at every turn. Humankind has always struggled with illness; and the experiences of different cities and countries have been compared and connected for thousands of years. Many great authors have published their eyewitness accounts and survivor stories of the great contagions of the past. When the great Muslim traveler Ibn Battuta visited Damascus in 1348 during the great plague, which went on to kill half of the population, he wrote about everything he saw. He reported, "God lightened their affliction; for the number of deaths in a single day at Damascus did not attain 2,000, while in Cairo it reached the figure of 24,000 a day." From the plagues of ancient Egypt recorded in Genesis to those like the Black Death that ravaged Europe in the Middle Ages, and from the Spanish flu of 1918 to the Covid-19 pandemic in our own century, this anthology contains fascinating accounts. Editor Peter Furtado places the human experience at the center of these stories, understanding that the way people have responded to disease crises over the centuries holds up a mirror to our own actions and experiences. Plague, Pestilence and Pandemic includes writing from around the world and highlights the shared emotional responses to pandemics: from rage, despair, dark humor, and heartbreak, to finally, hope that it may all be over. By connecting these moments in history, this book places our own reactions to the Covid-19 pandemic within the longer human story.

Download or read book Plague and Empire in the Early Modern Mediterranean World written by Nükhet Varlik and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2015-07-22 with total page 355 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the first systematic scholarly study of the Ottoman experience of plague during the Black Death pandemic and the centuries that followed. Using a wealth of archival and narrative sources, including medical treatises, hagiographies, and travelers' accounts, as well as recent scientific research, Nükhet Varlik demonstrates how plague interacted with the environmental, social, and political structures of the Ottoman Empire from the late medieval through the early modern era. The book argues that the empire's growth transformed the epidemiological patterns of plague by bringing diverse ecological zones into interaction and by intensifying the mobilities of exchange among both human and non-human agents. Varlik maintains that persistent plagues elicited new forms of cultural imagination and expression, as well as a new body of knowledge about the disease. In turn, this new consciousness sharpened the Ottoman administrative response to the plague, while contributing to the makings of an early modern state.

Download or read book Black Death written by Stephen Porter and published by Amberley Publishing Limited. This book was released on 2018-09-15 with total page 550 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The definitive history of the virulent and fatal plague outbreaks that wiped out half of London's populations from the medieval Black Death of the 1340s to the Great Plagues of the seventeenth century.

Download or read book Florence Under Siege written by John Henderson and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2019-08-20 with total page 415 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A vivid recreation of how the governors and governed of early seventeenth-century Florence confronted, suffered, and survived a major epidemic of plague Plague remains the paradigm against which reactions to many epidemics are often judged. Here, 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. From the evocation of the overcrowded conditions in isolation hospitals to the splendor of religious processions, Henderson analyzes Florentine reactions within a wider European context to assess the effect of state policies on the city, 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 of those who were left bereft and confused by the sudden loss of relatives.