Primary Sources: Plagues, Epidemics, & Pandemics: Plague: 1300s-1600s

"...is a digital library collection that brings a unique set of resources from Harvard’s libraries to Internet users everywhere. Offering valuable insights to students of the history of medicine and to researchers seeking an historical context for current epidemiology, the collection contributes to the understanding of the global, social–history, and public–policy implications of disease. Contagion is also a unique social–history resource for students of many ages and disciplines."

Part of the Decameron Web project at Brown University - "... find accounts by Boccaccio's contemporaries, as well as some information on how the Plague was viewed and interpreted in Medieval Medical and Religious Tracts."

The site includes "biographies, colorful images, and extensive historical accounts of medieval medicine and science..." The site provides a glossary and acatalogue raisonné (including images) of approximately 300 Persian and Arabic manuscripts available in the National Library of Medicine.

"...was published under the auspices of Elizabeth I during an outbreak of the plague in England and presents a fascinating look at public health, epidemiology, and illness in the late sixteenth century. The book contains instructions for the Queen’s emissaries in identifying towns struck by plague and then directs them in how to proceed with taxation, issues related to quarantine, and the handling of the clothing and bodies of those who died. It concludes with recipes for preparing medicines that would, purportedly, prevent the plague or cure it if already contracted. Typed transcriptions, both in the vernacular and in modern English, accompany the text to aid comprehension." The site also includes a selection of secondary source essays.