Plague and foreign threats to public health in early modern Venice

Abstract

By the sixteenth century, it was widely accepted that plague, whatever its true nature, was a contagious disease. The Venetian state ordered Venetian travellers and its representatives abroad to report any news about the mal contagioso to the government. Fragmentary survivals in the records of the Sanità and other sources allow an understanding of what it was that they thought was causing the disease and what Venetians thought could be done. It is a commonplace that traditional ideas about medicine and religion were increasingly discarded as more and more accurate records of the periodicity of disease became available. Venice's attempts allow us to measure the change.