Christensen, Daniel Eric (Author)
This dissertation is a study of the political efforts to prevent and combat health epidemics of the plague and other diseases in seventeenth-century Braunschweig- Wolfenbttel, a German territory in the Holy Roman Empire. It examines the efforts taken by the central government of the duke and his Privy Council, and also the efforts of the local and town governments to deal with the serious crises that epidemics could constitute. The main problem of the project is to understand how political authorities understood and responded to matters of sickness and widespread death in an era before modern public health regimes. Works of political history often overlook the epidemics that frequently struck early modern Europe, and histories of medicine often focus on the medical questions and theories to the neglect of concrete efforts to deal with epidemics. By investigating various governmental measures, the employment of new personnel and the redirecting of existing government personnel, and the establishment of such things as quarantine huts, lazarettos, and health passes to be used for travel, I make several observations about the nature of epidemic measures as well as ideas about health and sickness. Reformist programs and language overlapped and sometimes conflicted with more traditional understandings of epidemics and disease. Attempts to combat epidemics changed over the course of the century, toward more central governmental measures, staffing, funding, and general concern for the welfare of the duchy's subjects. But these new efforts were typically thwarted by a population that did not agree with or perhaps understand the government's measures regarding the territory's borders, the dangers of foreigners in the duchy, and the dire need to curtail regional commerce. When their very livelihood was on the line, and when the funds to execute the central government's initiatives did not exist, people on the edges of the territory earned the anger of the duke for their disobedience. Plus, those lofty initiatives to fight the mysterious enemy of the plague often devolved to token efforts or shared the public sphere with ad hoc measures, local leadership, and nongovernmental charity.
...MoreDescription Cited in Diss. Abstr. Int. A 65 (2005): 3121. UMI pub. no. 3141949.
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