Plague and the City

Lukas Engelmann is Chancellor’s Fellow for sociology and history of biomedicine at the University of Edinburgh. His doctoral research focused on the visual medical history of AIDS/HIV. His current research focuses on the digital transformation of epidemiology and the history of epidemiological models and concepts in the long twentieth century. John Henderson is Professor of Italian Renaissance History in the Department of History, Classics and Archaeology, Birkbeck, University of London; Fellow of Wolfson College, University of Cambridge; and Research Professor, Monash University, Melbourne. His previous publications include The Renaissance Hospital (2006). Christos Lynteris is Senior Lecturer in Social Anthropology at the University of St Andrews and Principal Investigator of the European Research Council funded research project Visual Representations of the Third Plague Pandemic (2013–2018). His work focuses on the anthropological and historical examination of infectious disease epidemics. His previous books include The Spirit of Selflessness in Maoist China (2012), Ethnographic Plague (2016) and Histories of Post-Modern Contagion (edited with Nicholas Evans, 2018).

• Introduction: The Plague and the City in History; Chapter 1: ‘Great Stenches, Horrible Sights and Deadly Abominations’: Butchery and the Battle Against Plague in Late Medieval English Towns; Chapter 2: Plague in Early Modern London: Chronologies, Localities, and Environments; Chapter 3: ‘Filth is the Mother of Corruption’: Plague and the Built Environment in Early Modern Florence; Chapter 4: Plague Views: Epidemics, Photography, and the Ruined City; Chapter 5: The Disease Map and the City: Desire and Imitation in the Bombay Plague, 1896-1914; Chapter 6: ‘A Source of Sickness’. Photographic Mapping of the Plague in Honolulu in 1900; Chapter 7: Public Culture and the Spectacle of Epidemic Disease in Rabat and Casablanca

'Through interdisciplinary approaches in medical, anthropological, and visual histories, the essays in this volume unravel complex interconnections between plague and urban environments from the Black Death to the twentieth century. Among their novel discoveries, they chart a shift in the visualization of plague from an emphasis on diseased bodies to the mapping and photographing of stark cityscapes, devised to understand and control epidemic disease.'Samuel Cohn, University of Glasgow, UK'Urban leaders once believed they could sense plague risks in fetid miasma, or map risky environments house-by-house, or photograph epidemic fodder within ubiquitous scenes of dirt and disorder. This set of engaging new studies highlights the urban-centred backdrop to much plague history. Readers will wind through backstreets and cul-de-sacs, spaces where the privileged identified plague spots.' Ann G. Carmichael, Indiana University, USA