BLACK DEATH

Series One: Rare Printed Sources

from the Herzog August Bibliothek, Wolfenbuttel, c1470-1822

PUBLISHER'S NOTE

This microfilm edition brings together a wide variety of rare printed sources, comprising some 230 volumes, covering the Black Death throughout Europe.

There is material for Germany, France, Italy, England, Switzerland and Central Europe, opening up numerous possibilities for comparative research work.

This project is particularly strong for treatises giving suggestions, instructions and advice; short accounts of the particular sufferings of individual cities, towns or villages; recipes for treatments; notes on experiments; and historical recipes observations looking at the origins, causes and effects of The Plague. Over 50% of the items date from the years 1540 through to 1650.

Although the Black Death reached the shores of the eastern Mediterranean as early as autumn 1347, the printed materials in this project date from 1470. However, a number of items such as Relazione istorica della peste (Palermo 1745); De Peste (Leipzig 1683); and De Victus et medicinae ratione cu alio, tum pestilentiae tempore observanda, commentarius by Johannes Guinterius (1542) provide observations and retrospective analysis going back to earlier years. Other items include:

• Johannes Jacobi Regimen contra pestilentiam sive epidimiam reveredissimi domini kamiuti [vielm Kaminti]

Episcopi Arusiensis [d.i. Bengt Krutsson].

Regimen Sanitatis per circulum anni valde utile. [Leipzig: Arnold von Köln, um 1493].

• Remède très utile contre la peste, laquelle court à présent en plusieurs lieux, speciallement par tout, nouvellement extraict de plusiers experiences pour le salut de la chose publique. Montpellier: Mortier de boys 1522.

• Regime contre la pestilence faict et composé par messieurs les médicins de la très rénommée cité de Basle en Allemagne (Lyon [1530?]: Claude Nourry).
Ein neurur, nutzlicher und grundtlicher Tractat von der Pestilentz. Tubingen 1564.

• Traité de la peste; de la petit vérolle et rougeolle, avec une brefve description de la lèpre. Ambroise Paré. Paris 1568

The preface of this item is addressed to Monsieur Castellan, Conseiller & medicin ordinaire du Roy, & premier de la Royne.

Sixty-two chapters of great detail include descriptions of various cases, analysis of causes, symptoms, discussions of remedies and other useful information. There is a chapter on the election of officials; Chapter 14 is entitled Des signes motels de la peste présente; Chapter 15 is entitled Des signes mortels de la peste.

Chapter 48 is headed Pour arrester le flux de ventre. It begins "Si on cognoist le flux de ventre estre trop grád, et la vertu affaiblie, et qu'il vint de l'affectio de tous les intestins, alors le faut arrester àquoy on procedera par remèdes baillez tant par la bouche que par clystères, de peur que la vie du malade ne forte par le siege, parquoy on donnera à manger aux malades de la bouillie faicte de farine de fourment avec une decoction d'eaùe; bol d'armenie, terre sellée et semence de pavot de chacun une drachme".

The following interesting sonnet appears immediately after the contents page:

"A La France

Encor que la vertu d'ell' mesme est honoree,
Contente du seul bien de son heureux dessin,
Si est ce que, l'ouvrier tendant à bonne fin,
Son oeuvre d'un loyer doit estre decoree:
Et c'est pourquoy iadis une image doree
L'Attique fait dresser à ce grand Medecin,
(Qui de leur air avoit corrigé le venin)
Et Máda qu'elle fut comme un Dieu adoree.
Quel loyer dóc as tu, ô FRANCE, preparé
Qui puisse contenter ton Chirurgien Paré,
Qui par son art t'a faict, q plus il ne te reste
Fors croire son conseil, sans autre requerir,
Pour te contregarder, voire pour te guerir.
De rougeolle, et verolle, et vers, et lepre,
et peste?
F Thoris Bellion"

Futher items include:

• Catalogue medicamentorum simplicium et facile parabilium pestilentiae veneno adversantium, Antonii Schneeberger 1605.

• De la Manière de préserver de la pestilence, et de querir, selon les bons autheurs. Benoit Textor Lyon, 1550.

• Préservatifs et remèdes contre la peste, ou le capucin charitable, enseignant le méthode pour remedier aux grandes misères que la peste a coûtume de causer parmy les peuples. Maurice de Toulon (Paris 1668).

For the later period there is Considerations on the means of preventing the communications of pestilential contagion, and of eradicating it in infected places (William Brownrigg, London, 1771); A Short discourse concerning pestilential contagion by Richard Mead (1721); and one year later, from the Faculté de Paris, Traité de la Peste, with replies to questions from the provinces, notes on methods to employ and particular problems to avoid. Many items, such as Nouvelles Réflexions sur l'origine, la cause, la propagation...etc de la peste…. by Jean Jaques Manget (Geneva 1722), look at the causes and origins of the Plague.

Again for the later period there is also a Treatise of the Plague containing an historical journal and medical account of the plague at Aleppo in the years 1760, 1761 and 1762. This also contains details on quarantines, lazarettos and the administration of the police in times of pestilence. Various appendices contain records of many individual cases and an account of the weather during the pestilential season, The volume was published by Patrick Russell in London (Robinson 1791). This is a remarkable volume running to 583 pages plus the extensive appendix section containing a very thorough series of case histories. Two examples are given below:

CASE IV July 1760

"A Widow lady, about forty, of a delicate, thin habit, and the mother of several children, found herself indisposed in the twelfth of July, in the evening, and observed one of the glands of her neck a little swelled, Next morning, she was pretty well, but, in the evening, became hot and feverish, and the swelling increased, On the 3rd day she was bled.

I saw her the 6th day, in the morning. Her eyes had not the muddy appearance, so remarkable in the plague, but her countenance was strangely altered, the forehead was streaked with purplish red, and her cheeks flushed, and were pale, by turns. The pulse was moderately full, but exceedingly quick - the skin felt hot and burning; and the tongue was whitish, not parched, She complained of head-ach, and of pain at the heart. Her thirst was moderate; she had a constant loathing, but had not vomited. She had retained her senses from the beginning, and gave me a distinct account of what had passed, adding, despondently, that she was sure she must die. The parotid of the right side, was enlarged to the size of a hen's egg, and two of the cervical glands also were considerably swelled. These tumours were hard painful, and slightly inflamed in the middle.

The exacerbation, on the night of the 6th, had been violent. She vomited frequently, and had a stool , for the first time in five. Her condition on the 7th was much the same as yesterday. The 8th, she appeared to be worse. The tumours were enlarged, but had made no approach to maturation. The 9th, I saw her not, but was informed she remained in the same state. She had hitherto taken the diaphoretic mixture, and acidulated cordials, but from this time (I believe) took no medicine. She died the 11th day of the disease."

CASE V

"The daughter of the lady, (CASE IV) a sprightly, healthy girl, eight years of age, was taken ill at the time with her mother. I saw her on the 6th day, for the first time. Her eyes were al little muddy, her face pale; but there was little alteration in her tongue. The pulse was low, and exceedingly quick. The external heat was considerable, but, by the nurse's account, she was then less feverish than the preceding day. She had a bubo, situated unusually high, in the right axilla, about the size of a green walnut, hard, and painful, but without external inflammation. On each arm were two pustules (the size of a ripe small - pocle) which had been protruded crust, from beneath which ouzed a thin ichorous matter. The skin round them, was not so intensely red as I had before observed in carbuncles. besides these eruptions, one less common, was situated in the left arm, painful, glandular-like swelling, larger than a hazelnut, and deep seated under the skin, which was neither tense, nor inflamed.

Circumstances prevented my seeing this girl after the 9th day.
The axillary bubo opened in the 3rd week, and she recovered very well.

An old woman who attended constantly on this girl and her mother was not infected."

This microfilm set enables scholars to ask all assorts of questions about the European plague. What was its impact? How quickly did it spread? How did different regions try to cope with such devastating problems? Were the effects different in towns and cities compared to rural areas? What longer term effects did it have? Rural insurrection, Peasant revolt, the Flagellents, religious persecution, crime and violence, social and economic disruption and dislocation… this microfilm set has much to offer students of the socio-economic, not to mention demographic, implications of the great pestilence.

As Natalie Zemon Davis, Henry Charles Lea Professor of History at Princeton university states:

"The Black Death is one of those momentous events in Europe that touched every feature of life, from economics and wage labour to art history and hopes for the after life, from concepts of social alliance to new forms of hospital Architecture. The pamphlet literature it inspired is one of the most interesting of the end of the Middle Ages and the early modern period, and the collection from the library at Wolfenbüttel is remarkable in its geographical range and time span. Scholars will find this new selection of Plague pamphlets a wonderful resource."

This is backed up by the comments of Professor Mary Lindemann of the Carnegie Mellon university who writes:

"Plague and pestilence, like war and gamine, powerfully shaped the consciousness of early modern Europeans, Much studied but still so little understood, the experience of epidemic disease is one of the central themes of social history. The Wolfenbüttel collection of plague tracts and pamphlets offers rich material for any scholar of early modern Europe interested in medicine and public health, in mentalité, in the growth of early modern governments bureaucracies, or in social relations more generally."

A full Detailed Listing and Contents of Reels information appears on the first reel of each part of this microfilm set. This data is also made available in the paperback guide which accompanies this publication.

We would very much like to acknowledge the help and support of all those who have worked on this project at the Herzog August Bibliothek in Wolfenbüttel, in particular Dr Werner Arnold for his help and collaboration in organising the filming of this material.

David Tyler
November 1993

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