ABSTRACT
This chapter investigates patterns and presentations of plague in Europe from the Black Death, 1347-51, to successive waves of infectious disease as late as the early nineteenth century when it flared briefly in isolated places such as Corfu, Malta, and Noja near Bari in 1814-15. It begins by investigating clinical aspects of plague, then the epidemiological, and at the end the social, political, and psychological dimensions of the disease. As far as the signs and symptoms of historical plague go, the patterns differed from diseases such as early-modern syphilis or tuberculosis: few striking changes occurred from the period of its immediate shocks on the bodies of the previously unexposed in 1347–51 to its last appearances in the early nineteenth century. The seasonality of medieval and early-modern plagues illustrates wide variability but also distinctive patterns. Patterns of plague had other momentous effects on mentalities. With the Italian plague of 1574–7, changes in policies and practice became more pervasive through the peninsula.
