4. Quarantine

About this Lecture

Lecture

In this module, we look closely at the idea of quarantine and how this influenced how society dealt with plague. Quarantine developed as a measure to deal with plague significantly in this period. This had large social and medical consequences on society at large.

Course

In this course, Dr Jane Stevens-Crawshaw (Oxford Brookes University) explores the relationship between plague and public health during the renaissance in England. We start by looking at how public health functioned and developed in the renaissance. We then move on to have a closer look at the changing nature of plague in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. After this we look at how hospitals changed during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The penultimate module will see us look more closely at the idea of quarantine and how this influenced how society dealt with plague. Finally, we examine the Great Plague of 1665 which wiped out nearly a quarter of London’s population.

Lecturer

Jane Stevens-Crawshaw is a senior lecturer in early modern European history at Oxford Brookes University. She specialises in the history of renaissance Europe with a focus on the impact of the developing ideas about 'cleanliness' on the public health. She has also written on the establishment of plague hospitals in Europe.