"It cannot be decernit quha are clean and quha are foulle." Responses to Epidemic Disease in Sixteenth and Seventeenth-Century Scotland

Citation

Oram R (2006) "It cannot be decernit quha are clean and quha are foulle." Responses to Epidemic Disease in Sixteenth and Seventeenth-Century Scotland. Renaissance and Reformation / Renaissance et Reforme, 30 (4), pp. 13-39. http://www.crrs.ca/renref/contents/30-4.htm

Abstract
In comparison with research in England and mainland Europe, research into the impact of epidemic disease on the economy, society and culture of 16th- and earlier 17th-century Scotland has progressed little since the 1960s, with most recent discussion recycling research from the 1930s and 1950s. An absence of prominent contemporary ‘plague literature’ and over-reliance on published record sources has served further to produce a skewed traditional account which presents epidemic as a primarily urban phenomenon with limited long-term consequences for the country generally. This paper offers a review of the evidence and challenges that traditional model, arguing instead that disease was one of the primary agencies for socio-economic dislocation and change in Scotland down to 1650.

Keywords
plague; epidemic; disease control; pestilence; quarantine; typhus; Plague history Scotland; Scotland Social conditions; History, Medieval Scotland

Journal
Renaissance and Reformation / Renaissance et Reforme: Volume 30, Issue 4

• Oram Plague.pdf