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Plague Image and Imagination from Medieval to Modern TimesPesthouse Imaginaries

Plague Image and Imagination from Medieval to Modern Times: Pesthouse Imaginaries [This study considers some Italian lazarettos that were not situated in port cities, offering an environmental perspective on peri-urban spaces involved in urban plague control rather than customary contagionist views of plague. Pesthouses entailed high costs to communities, whether they rented and outfitted available suburban properties or instead undertook the massive expenditures to design and build great structures de novo. Were they worth the investments? Did pesthouses ‘work’ to constrain and contain plague mortality? While historical evidence cannot answer such questions definitively, this chapter argues that extramural confinement zones did not remove ongoing plague risks from cities and towns that used them, largely because plague was not and is not transmitted person-to-person. The built fabric of early modern plague management disappeared with urban expansion and infrastructure modernisation, such that little remained when plague’s ‘Third Pandemic’ unfolded. Yet the contagionist view of premodern plagues endures. We can now re-see former landscapes of plague, from above and underground.] http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png

Plague Image and Imagination from Medieval to Modern TimesPesthouse Imaginaries

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Publisher
Springer International Publishing
Copyright
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021
ISBN
978-3-030-72303-3
Pages
69 –110
DOI
10.1007/978-3-030-72304-0_4
Publisher site
See Chapter on Publisher Site

Abstract

[This study considers some Italian lazarettos that were not situated in port cities, offering an environmental perspective on peri-urban spaces involved in urban plague control rather than customary contagionist views of plague. Pesthouses entailed high costs to communities, whether they rented and outfitted available suburban properties or instead undertook the massive expenditures to design and build great structures de novo. Were they worth the investments? Did pesthouses ‘work’ to constrain and contain plague mortality? While historical evidence cannot answer such questions definitively, this chapter argues that extramural confinement zones did not remove ongoing plague risks from cities and towns that used them, largely because plague was not and is not transmitted person-to-person. The built fabric of early modern plague management disappeared with urban expansion and infrastructure modernisation, such that little remained when plague’s ‘Third Pandemic’ unfolded. Yet the contagionist view of premodern plagues endures. We can now re-see former landscapes of plague, from above and underground.]

Published: Jul 30, 2021

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