A Plague on Bohemia? Mapping the Black Death

Datos Bibliográficos

ID4968914
AutoresDavid C Mengel (autor de correspondencia)
Año2011
Volumen211
Número1
Páginas3-34
Fecha de publicación2011-05-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessNo
TipoARTICLE
RevistaPast & Present (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0031-2746 • E-ISSN: 1477-464X
EditorialOxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1093/pastj/gtq069
PMID21961188
OpenAlexW2090914098
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas11

My gracious lord: alas! From numerous sources I have learned that plague now rages in Bohemia, just as I have often predicted to you. For that reason, I have written for your eminence a brief guide, compiled from the better sayings of the Greek doctors Avicenna, Galen and Hippocrates.1 The pattern was familiar in Europe. Terrifying warnings of an approaching pestilence were succeeded by the ravaging disease itself. In this case it was the kingdom of Bohemia, where a university master and physician to Emperor Charles IV (1346–78) responded by offering his lord rehashed ancient medical wisdom. As with many examples of this genre, little of his advice would earn the approval of modern doctors — except, perhaps, his second of eight points: ‘Get yourself away from any place where plague is prevailing and from people infected with it’.2 But in the later fourteenth century, where might one find such a place?

Ancient history · Emperor · Genealogy · Plague (disease) · Classics · History · Yersinia bacterium, plague, ectoparasites research