Political and cultural changes as an effect of the pestilences and pandemics through the centuries: Case studies

Abstract

In considering pandemics from an historical point of view, we should first have in mind the differences in perception and language which have evolved over the centuries: the numerous sources we are dealing with may refer to the same phenomenon in different ways. Notwithstanding the fact that pestilences belong to human history from the very beginning (the Bible, the Iliad and Thucydides’ The History of the Peloponnesian War are some appropriate witnesses), only between the 1800s and the 1900s did the scientific notions start classifying viruses and related diseases, allowing intervention through scientific medicine to repair all or some of the damage caused by pandemics. The Black Death is in everyone's memory, but other pandemics have killed before and after it. This article goes through the events, giving evidence of the contacts and distances between different pandemics, aware that the effects of those diseases on culture and society are controversial and that the debate is still open.