Our last episode is a special one. We first join Dr. Doina Anca Cretu to explore some facets of a terrible humanitarian and health crisis that took place in a war-torn Europe during World War…
In our twelfth episode, Professor Brian Cummings shares with us a letter written by the famous Dutch humanist Desiderius Erasmus (c. 1466-1536). In 1500, an outbreak of plague in Paris forced Erasmus to flee to…
‘I thought Herr Hofrat would approve of my decision and I am convinced that nobody will be casting another stone at our clinic when they hear that I have voluntarily self-isolated along with the nurses…
In our tenth episode, Dr. Lori Jones explores John of Burgundy’s Plague Tract’s travels and transformations. This text was one of the most famous and influential plague treaties of the Middle Ages, though we know…
In our ninth episode, Dr. Jane Stevens Crawshaw guides our reading of Rocco Benedetti’s Accounts of some events taking place in Venice during the plague years of 1576-1577. The text is a first-hand account of…
In our eighth episode, Dr. Clément Godbarge explores the writings of Filippo Cavriana, a sixteenth-century Italian physician and spy who worked at the court of France for many years. What was the nature of the…
What do the travelogue of an eighteenth-century Ottoman ambassador and the reflections of a seventeenth-century dervish from Istanbul have in common? They both provide precious insights into Ottoman experiences of epidemics at home and abroad,…
When the Covid-19 pandemic reached Brazil, it soon became clear that the virus was not as democratic as some had first imagined. At the very beginning, the ones who were infected the most were the…
Between 1725 and 1735, Michael Ranft, a Lutheran clergyman born in Saxony, published a book titled De masticatione mortuorum in tumulis (Concerning the dead who chew in their graves), the German edition of which bears…
