Tag: plague
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Philadelphia’s plague
Hayat El BoukariTetouan, Morocco On August 3, 1793, a young French sailor rooming at Richard Denney’s boarding house was desperately ill with a fever.1 As he was a poor foreigner, no one bothered to find out his name. His fever worsening, he died a few days later, as also did eight residents from two houses…
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Preparing for a zombie apocalypse
Larry KerrCarlisle, Pennsylvania, United States What can we learn from a Zombie Apocalypse? The first thing to learn? It could happen. Anyone who has been on this earth for a length of time knows that when a person says something cannot possibly happen, it almost certainly will. Even more worrisome is the disclaimer that if…
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The Plague of Athens
Nobody knows what the plague of Athens was. Was it bubonic plague? Was it a viral infection? Speculations have abounded for centuries. In the first days of summer the Lacedemonians and their allies sat down and laid waste the country. Not many days after their arrival the plague first began to show itself among the…
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Birth trays in the Italian Renaissance
Rachel BakerChicago, IL Recurring outbreaks of plague and their resulting demographic catastrophes largely contributed to the Renaissance emphasis on family and procreation. After the initial epidemic in 1348, the plague returned more than a dozen times over the next two centuries. Childbirth was seen as a vital measure to combat plague’s devastation, and a woman’s…
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Giorgione and the plague
Giorgione’s painting Il Tramonto (The Sunset) is as mysterious as most of the other details of the artist’s life. Painted around 1506, it was lost and rediscovered in 1933 in a villa near Venice, in very poor condition, damaged, and with holes in it. Over time it underwent three restorations. The holes were covered with…
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Saint Roch
Saint Roch is the patron saint of dogs, bachelors, surgeons, tile makers, invalids, and diseased cattle. He helps pilgrims and is invoked against epidemics and diseases of the skin. In the Italian Renaissance painting by Giovanni Buonconsiglio (ca. 1465, ca. 1535) he is shown in traveling attire, pointing at his plague bubo, in company of…