Plague And The City (the Body In The City)

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. Cover 1 Half Title 2 Series Page 3 Title Page 4 Copyright Page 5 Table of Contents 6 List of figures 8 Preface and acknowledgements 9 Notes on contributors 10 Introduction: the plague and the city in history 12 Urban pathologies 13 The social life of plague 16 Urban interventions 18 Imagining and re-imagining plague 20 Conclusion 22 Acknowledgements 22 Notes 23 References 24 Chapter 1: ‘Great stenches, horrible sights, and deadly abominations’: butchery and the battle against plague in late medieval English towns 29 Butchery and the transmission of plague 31 Slaughterhouses, scalding houses, and meat markets 35 Waste disposal 37 The quality of the urban meat supply 41 Notes 43 References 46 Chapter 2: Plague in early modern London: chronologies, localities, and environments 50 Public authority and official responses 52 Chronologies and geographies of plague 56 Chronology and incidence 57 Seasonal patterns and coincident diseases 63 Localities and environments 64 Conclusion: bubonic plague? 67 Notes 68 References 72 Chapter 3: ‘Filth is the mother of corruption’: plague, the poor, and the environment in early modern Florence 80 The ‘city is [like] a hospital’: the tradition of sanitary legislation 81 The plague of 1630–1631 82 Medical theory: poverty, disease, and the environment 84 Public health and preventive measures 85 The sanitary survey in Florence, August to September 1630 88 Conclusion 96 Notes 97 References 99 Chapter 4: Plague views: epidemics, photography, and the ruined city 102 Introduction: the imperial album 102 China and the ‘photography complex’ 105 ‘A wilderness of ruin’: catastrophic empire 107 Reading Griffith’s Views of the Plague 112 Conclusion 117 Notes 119 References 122 Chapter 5: The disease map and the city: desire and imitation in the Bombay plague, 1896–1914 127 The arrival of plague in India, 1896 129 The creation of the Plague Committee 131 Three case studies 134 Rethinking the mimetic map 144 Notes 146 References 147 Chapter 6: ‘A source of sickness’: photographic mapping of the plague in Honolulu in 1900 150 Introduction 150 ‘A source of filth and a cause of sickness’ 153 Photographic portraits of plague houses 157 Photographic mapping of plague 160 Medical geography beyond cartography 162 Conclusion 164 Notes 165 References 166 Chapter 7: Public culture and the spectacle of epidemic disease in Rabat and Casablanca 170 Plague in Morocco 171 Figuring disease within scientific urbanism 173 Urban coexistence and Moroccan modernities 176 Conclusion 180 Notes 180 References 182 Index 184 "Plague and the City uncovers discourses of plague and anti-plague measures in the city during the medieval and early 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. It is ideal for students of early modern history, and of the early modern city and plague more specifically"-- Provided by publisher