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5 - Plague in Urban Healthscapes

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 August 2021

Janna Coomans
Affiliation:
Universiteit van Amsterdam
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Summary

uses the biopolitical and socio-environmental perspectives on health constructed in the previous chapters to reinterpret municipal responses to plague. This chapter argues that when Netherlandish cities took action against epidemic spread, they applied pre-existing health policies. It challenges two scholarly biases, namely of crisis and of government. First, actions to prevent spread of the plague are often interpreted as radical innovations, yet many subjects targeted in plague ordinances were usual suspects and recurring problems; already regulated outside the context of plague because they were perceived as posing a (combined) threat to physical and moral communal well-being. Cities employed various strategies, from quarantine and street sanitation to spiritual measures and culling dogs. Secondly, there is a clear need to move beyond a top-down perspective and complicate the playing field of daily dealings with an epidemic through networks of plague care, which are discussed here by focusing on the role of hospitals, medical officials and confraternal caregivers, especially the Cellites.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

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  • Plague in Urban Healthscapes
  • Janna Coomans, Universiteit van Amsterdam
  • Book: Community, Urban Health and Environment in the Late Medieval Low Countries
  • Online publication: 17 August 2021
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108924344.006
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  • Plague in Urban Healthscapes
  • Janna Coomans, Universiteit van Amsterdam
  • Book: Community, Urban Health and Environment in the Late Medieval Low Countries
  • Online publication: 17 August 2021
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108924344.006
Available formats
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Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Plague in Urban Healthscapes
  • Janna Coomans, Universiteit van Amsterdam
  • Book: Community, Urban Health and Environment in the Late Medieval Low Countries
  • Online publication: 17 August 2021
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108924344.006
Available formats
×