ABSTRACT
For centuries it has been recognised that poverty is often accompanied by illness or its social and economic consequences. Despite health insurance and welfare programmes, disease and its effects remain numerically important as a cause of poverty up to the twentieth century. In an age which did not yet know a national health service or any other form of compulsory health insurance, the effects of prolonged illness or sudden death during an epidemic were disastrous. It meant the bringing down of the formerly self-sufficient lower income groups to the ranks of the destitutes. When victims recovered, they emerged ensnared in debts incurred during their malady. Epidemic diseases incapacitated at least as many people as they killed, thus reducing income and assets as well as leaving bereaved children and spouses in their wake.
