ABSTRACT

The most difficult and testing times for any mediaeval physician were likely to have been during the epidemics of the plague, which reached their height in the outbreak of 1348 and the serious recurrence in 1362. An acute epidemic of disease that was most likely to have been the plague was indicated in the Franciscan records during 1340 when the accounts of S. Francesco, Bologna, recorded a large number of friars falling ill between June and September. According to the Bolognese wills in July 1348, six testators met with their notaries to draw up their wills at S. Domenico, and five met at S. Francesco. Medical or surgical tracts, written both before and after the Black Death of 1348, had described prophylactic measures that could be tried, as well as describing some therapies by which the death might be avoided.