Transcriber’s Notes: Underscores “_” before and after a word or phrase indicate _italics_ in the original text. Small capitals have been converted to SOLID capitals. Illustrations have been moved so they do not break up paragraphs. Old or antiquated spellings have been preserved. Typographical errors have been silently corrected PLAGUE AND PESTILENCE IN LITERATURE AND ART OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS LONDON EDINBURGH GLASGOW NEW YORK TORONTO MELBOURNE BOMBAY HUMPHREY MILFORD M.A. PUBLISHER TO THE UNIVERSITY [Illustration: FRONTISPIECE S. SEBASTIAN. BY SODOMA] PLAGUE AND PESTILENCE IN LITERATURE AND ART BY RAYMOND CRAWFURD M.A., M.D. OXON., F.R.C.P. FELLOW OF KING’S COLLEGE, LONDON OXFORD AT THE CLARENDON PRESS 1914 PREFACE This volume represents substantially the FitzPatrick Lectures which I had the privilege of delivering at the Royal College of Physicians in 1912. Originally I intended to do no more than gather together into a succinct record the various memorials and reminders of Pestilence that I had met with in my wanderings at home and abroad and in my casual incursions into general literature. Insensibly the desire to understand supplanted the desire merely to record, and the desire to explain superseded the endeavour to understand. I have turned my attention, as far as practicable, only to the literary and artistic associations of Pestilence, but these have inevitably overlapped the confines of history and of medical science. The latter territory has been invaded only so far as was necessary to ensure a correct orientation to the inquiry. I have thought it wise to let the curtain fall at the end of the eighteenth century, leaving it to my readers to decide what vestiges of the mentality of distant centuries have survived into this twentieth. A little reflection on this will afford a most salutary lesson to all of us. _January 1914._ LIST OF PLATES S. Sebastian. By Sodoma _Frontispiece_ PLATE I: Apollo with Bow and Mouse. Bronze coin of Alexandria Troas. _c._ 250 B.C. × 2. Asclepius with Serpent. Bronze coin of Pergamon. Time of Antoninus Pius. × 2. Serpent and Galley. Medallion. Time of Antoninus Pius. Pest-Thaler, struck at Wittenberg, A.D. 1528. Christ on the Cross. The Brazen Serpent _To face p._ 4