Disease Flashcards
What are the four historiographical approaches to disease
1) Epidemics- plague and pox
2) mortality vs. morbidity
3) Disease entities- history and biology
4) constructivist/relativist histories of health and healing
Define morbidity
the condition of being disease; rate of incidence
3 x explanations for the plague
1) Divine (wrath of god)
2) Celestial (malign plants)
3) Terrestrial (foul air)
5 individual responses to the plague
1) pray
2) healthy regime
3) restorative/preventative remedies
4) avoid foul air
5) flee the city
3 civic responses to the plague
1) monitor populations
2) improve sanitation
3) isolate affected
What are the three Galenic divisions of the causes of disease
1) imbalance of humours
2) malfunction of organs
3) trauma caused by external agent
What are the Avicenna’s three divisions of the causes of disease
1) internal
2) external
3) combination
How does Weisser argue EM patients viewed disease?
as continually shifting clusters of symptoms, rather than as discrete entities that operated the same in all bodies.
How many people in medieval Europe were killed by the Black Death
1.5 million
How did plague spread from Crimea?
Bodies of dead plagued soldiers catapulted over the walls to infect the inhabitants; fleeting traders took the plague to Sicily.
What modern event refuelled interest in scholarship around the spread of the Black Death?
Rise of the HIV/AIDs epidemic.
What does Samuel Cohn argue about the relationship between the Black Death and the later Bubonic Plague?
[The Black Death: End of a Paradigm]
Not the same pathogen- two diseases had different signs, symptoms and epidemiologies.
Humans have no natural immunity to plague, whereas populations adapted rapidly to black death pathogen
What five factors about the Black Death allow Cohn to argue it is different to later plague?
1) speed
2) mode of transmission
3) seasonality
4) cycles of recurrence
5) swiftness of adaptation
What did German physician Villiani identify during the German Plague 1357-58?
struck most vigorously in areas not infected by the first plague: doctors could react culturally, adapting new techniques.
Why does Siena argue we shouldn’t use the term ‘syphilis’?
It’s anachronistic: EM term ‘venereal disease’ was a single disease concept that subsumed many conditions now regarded as separate: not just syphillis, but also gonorrhea, chancre, and other urethral/genital issues’
Don’t read ‘modern bacteriological conception backwards’.
How did the 1348 University of Paris treatise explain the plague?
1) planetary constellations: conjunction of Saturn, Jupiter and Mars- Jupiter as a hot and moist planet, leading to putrefaction, leading to plague
2) terrestrial: bad air released after an earthquake.
3) Combination: bad planets causes thunder, rain and wind, which dispersed the poisoned air, and went to the heart.
How did the 1348 Paris treatise explain why certain individuals were unaffected
Only certain bodily constitutions were pre-disposed to suffer; those ‘hot and wet’ , where decay was more likely.
Who did Fay Getz identify was the intellectual influence for the 1348 University of Paris Treatise?
Hippocratic text ‘Epidemics’ - stressed the importance of astrology to medical practice
Aristotelian text ‘Meteorology’ - concerned atmospheric phenomena and putrefaction.
Method of attempt to rationally understand the causes of plague: a natural event, and by implication, part of God’s plan.
What did German physician Henry Lamme say in 1411 about the recurrence of plague?
‘It is better to say that the epidemic comes from God than to repeat all the opinions one hears.
Who did Henry Knighton blame for the plague?
‘hordes of prideful women’, who caused social excess as the wickedness of humanity manifested itself on earth. [Fay Getz]
Asides from plague, what else was caused by the ‘fatal alignment of Saturn, Jupiter and Mars’?
Produced poisonous vapours which caused the pox
When did astrological and providential theories decline?
Late 15th century- increasingly the cause of disease was more closely linked to the body.
How did a 1648 English Treatise explain the origins of the French Box
Venereal disease arises spontaneously in the wombs of women who had sex with numerous different men
‘The mixture of so many Seeds does occasion such a Corruption of the Passage of the Matrix that it degenerates into a proper virulent Ferment.
What did Venitians believe about witchcraft and disease?
[Laura McGough ‘Demons, Nature or God 2006]
Possible that which could cause disease, even disease linked to natural phenomena such as sexual intercourse. Witchcraft helped provide an explanation for incurable illnesses and account for death.
Two arguments made by Cohn in ‘The Black Death: End of a Paradigm”
1) Black death was not the same disease as the bubonic plague - two disease were radically different in their signs, symptoms and epidemiologies
2) Humans have no natural immunity to the modern bubonic plague, whereas Western European populations adapted rapidly to the Black death pathogen - this immunity conditioned a cultural response.
How did society get less violent in response to plague?
- Growth of centralized authority in Florence, decline in factional strife
- Growth of diplomacy and balance of power between city states in northern/central Italy 15thc.
- Conclusion of 100 yr War France mid 15thc.
Two responses to ‘plague guilt’ in Europe 1348-1350
- movements of flagellants
- burning of Jews
What is the romantic/gothic interpretation of the black death
as ‘giving birth’ to the Renaissance- evidence of men’s progression toward a new age.
What is the Annales school interpretation of the black death
used municipal records to see Black Death as evidence for the enduring nature of medieval social and intellectual institutions.
What was the regimen of James of Agramont 1348
Causes of the plague by examining how they were cured
-> emphasis on the importance of pure air in the prevention of disease. Plague killed both master and servant;: distinguished it
Nietzchien idea that illness was vital for culture to develop
The black death was the ‘crisis of the European soul’ and 1348 the ‘year in which the modern man was conceived.
Socio-economic revisionism
attack the notion that plague = drop in population = crop failure = labour shortages =end of feudalism = growth of mercantile culture: plague returned time and time again, population already falling,
What were the London Bills of Mortality
Kept in London from 1529 plague, started in order to inform the royal court when plague had reach a state that meant flight from town was necessary, printed every Thursday- recorded births and deaths of members of CoE, their predominant symptom, and what the doctor diagnosed them.
17th century diseases with no modern equivalent
Ague
Bloody flux
consumption
Quinsy
How many people in London 1632 died of diseases no longer recognised today
3783, according to the Bills of Mortality
What were the effects of the Plague in Rennes [France] 1605
Bad.
- 20% affected died within 24 hours
- 80% within 5 days
What was the lethality rate of the plague 1500-1770 in France
60-80%
