Seuchen und Seuchenbekämpfung in Wien in der Spätphase des Dreißigjährigen Krieges und im Jahrzehnt danach (ca. 1645–1660)

During the first half of the 17th century Vienna saw a rise in population due to the fact that the city was less affected by military campaigns. Nevertheless, the population faced epidemic outbreaks in the 1640s and 1650s, which caused up- and downswings in the population figures. Within the framework of environmental indicators which support the notion of „a little ice age“, a quantitative approach based on the Viennese Bills of Mortality (Totenbeschauprotokolle) for the period 1648–1660, supplemented with parish records and governmental patents, enabled greater insight into the demographic, social and „biopolitical“ consequences of these epidemic outbreaks. Whereas some plague workers, viewers and clerks were deeply involved in the „plague management“ of the authorities, most of the remarkably high number of academic physicians managed to draw aside. Though governmental edicts and death records indicate a stricter control in the implementation of quarantine in the 1650s, even in the case of the plague outbreak in 1654/55, aristocratic privileges sometimes outweighed measures to fight the epidemics

Ancient history · Art · Geography · Humanities · Outbreak · Plague (disease) · Political science · Population · Quarantine · Socioeconomics · Sociology · Demography · History · Medicine · Travel-related health issues · Virology · Yersinia bacterium, plague, ectoparasites research