ABSTRACT
This chapter illustrates how references to poison in plague tracts were not merely a convenient analogy or metaphor to convey a general sense of danger, infection, or a virulent disease, but were used deliberately to emphasize the notion of poison both as a kind of substance and as an agent of disease. It explains the crucial similarities between sin and poison: their similar animal origins, infectious natures, and the comparable difficulty in curing them. Descriptions and emphasis on the relationship between poison and disease in early plague treatises constitute a significant shift in medical thinking and description. The metaphor of poison centered on the nature of venenum brought important implications for understanding not only pestilential disease but also poison itself. The chapter explores the ways in which physicians frequently employed a notion of poisoned air as a principal cause of pestilential disease. The precise motivations of physicians for making references and analogies to poison remain difficult to pin down.
