Epilogue

Many of the ideas which have been explored in this study endured beyond 1650 and shaped public health structures beyond Venice. ¹ In 1675, for example, the Venetian Health Officers recorded in archival material that they faced a problem. A commodity was being imported into the city on a large scale, but magistrates were uncertain of the risks it posed to the city’s public health. An immediate investigation was ordered from Venice’s College of Physicians. ² The tricky merchandise in question was tobacco – which was being brought into city in bulk and also being carried by passengers arriving at the city’s lazaretti. Although leaf and powdered tobacco were celebrated by contemporaries as preservatives against disease, particularly the plague, Venice’s doctors determined that the merchandise required a period of quarantine. Tobacco and coffee were just two of the goods which were brought to the lazaretti of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and which required new responses from the Health Office and the structures for trade. The problem of tobacco endured, even forcing a smoking ban in parts of the islands that contained flammable materials by 1732, after a fire in the lazaretto vecchio. ³ There was significant variety in the commodities and foodstuffs brought into the city during the eighteenth century: from barrels of lemons in water to bovine animals. ⁴ Fabrics were of enduring concern and disinfection of wool continued to be a priority. In 1643, the demand for this service was so high that fifty disinfectors were said to be required. ⁵ New fabrics were also introduced: tiger pellets are recorded as having been left in the lazaretto vecchio in 1696; the Health Office officials were struggling to find the owners, after the pellets had been left by someone in quarantine two years previously. ⁶