"More Feared than Death itself?" The Form and Function of the Lazaretto in Early Modern Italy

• In Event: Body in the City II: Public Health and Space in Early Modern Italy

Abstract

The isolation hospital or Lazaretto is often portrayed in histories of public health as having played a vital contribution to the campaign against the ‘invisible enemy’ of plague, and a model on which successful nineteenth-century public health policies were based. The present paper will question this triumphalist vision, by examining the form and the function of early modern Italian Lazaretti. It will examine first how contemporary ideas about the role of these institutions was reflected in their architectural design, whether purpose-built Lazaretti or the many converted monastic complexes requisitioned during times of plague. Secondly, through an analysis of the records of the Lazaretti, and in particular of the sick and the dead, it will assess the extent to which they really did live up to their perceived function within the wider context of the public health policies put into place to combat plague.

Author

• John S. Henderson, Birkbeck, University of London