Chapter I: Preface

This volume represents substantially the FitzPatrick Lectures which I had the privilege of delivering at the Royal College of Physicians in 1912. Originally I intended to do no more than gather together into a succinct record the various memorials and reminders of Pestilence that I had met with in my wanderings at home and abroad and in my casual incursions into general literature. Insensibly the desire to understand supplanted the desire merely to record, and the desire to explain superseded the endeavour to understand. I have turned my attention, as far as practicable, only to the literary and artistic associations of Pestilence, but these have inevitably overlapped the confines of history and of medical science. The latter territory has been invaded only so far as was necessary to ensure a correct orientation to the inquiry. I have thought it wise to let the curtain fall at the end of the eighteenth century, leaving it to my readers to decide what vestiges of the mentality of distant centuries have survived into this twentieth. A little reflection on this will afford a most salutary lesson to all of us.

_January 1914._

LIST OF PLATES

S. Sebastian. By Sodoma _Frontispiece_

PLATE I:
Apollo with Bow and Mouse. Bronze coin of
Alexandria Troas. _c._ 250 B.C. × 2.
Asclepius with Serpent. Bronze coin of Pergamon.
Time of Antoninus Pius. × 2.
Serpent and Galley. Medallion. Time of Antoninus Pius.
Pest-Thaler, struck at Wittenberg, A.D. 1528.
Christ on the Cross.
The Brazen Serpent _To face p._ 4

PLATE II. Plague of Ashdod. By N. Poussin _To face p._ 18
PLATE III. Plague of David. By P. Mignard _To face p._ 19
PLATE IV. Gregory and the Angel _To face p._ 93
PLATE V. Fresco in S. Pietro in Vincoli, Rome _To face p._ 95
PLATE VI. La Peste à Rome. By Delaunay _To face p._ 96
PLATE VII. Sebastian as Protector against
Pestilence. By Benozzo Gozzoli _To face p._ 99
PLATE VIII. Sodoma’s Sebastian Plague Banner
(Reverse). SS. Roch and Sigismund, and
Brethren of Compagnia di S. Sebastiano _To face p._ 100
PLATE IX. SS. Mark, Sebastian, Roch, Cosmas,
and Damian. By Titian _To face p._ 102
PLATE X. S. Roch. By Ambrogio Borgognone _To face p._ 108
PLATE XI. S. Roch tended by an Angel. By Niklaus
Manuel. Intercessory plague picture _To face p._ 109
PLATE XII. Madonna and Child, S. Anna and Saints.
By G. Francesco Caroto _To face p._ 110
PLATE XIII. Dance of Death, at Basle _To face p._ 135
PLATE XIV. Madonna della Misericordia.
By Bonfigli _To face p._ 138
PLATE XV. Madonna del Soccorso.
By Sinibaldo Ibi _To face p._ 138
PLATE XVI. Plague Banner. Christ and Saints.
By Bonfigli _To face p._ 139
PLATE XVII. Pest-Blätter:
1. The Almighty with SS. Sebastian and Roch.
2. The Almighty, Madonna and Suppliants. The
Virgin and Child, S. Anna and Suppliants _To face p._ 142
PLATE XVIII. The Impruneta Virgin _To face p._ 146
PLATE XIX. S. Tecla liberates Este from Plague.
By Giovanni Battista Tiepolo _To face p._ 147
PLATE XX. Plague. A drawing by Raphael _To face p._ 148
PLATE XXI. Procession to S. Maria della Salute,
Venice. From a seventeenth century engraving _To face p._ 172
PLATE XXII. Carlo Borromeo.
By Annibale Carracci _To face p._ 173
PLATE XXIII. Borromeo leading a Plague
Procession. By Pietro da Cortona _To face p._ 174
PLATE XXIV. Borromeo interceding for the
Plague-stricken. By P. Puget.
A marble bas-relief _To face p._ 175
PLATE XXV. Torture and Execution of the Anointers _To face p._ 179
PLATE XXVI. Plague of Naples, 1656.
By Micco Spadara _To face p._ 184
PLATE XXVII. Plague Scenes in Rome, 1656.
From an old engraving _To face p._ 186
PLATE XXVIII:
1. Dress of a Marseilles Doctor, 1720.
2. German Caricature of the same _To face p._ 200
PLATE XXIX. Peste de Marseille.
By François Gérard _To face p._ 206
PLATE XXX. La Peste dans la Ville de Marseille
en 1720. By J. F. de Troy _To face p._ 207
PLATE XXXI. Les Pestiférés de Jaffa. By Baron Gros _To face p._ 208