Introduction

Two lengthy death reports made to Milan’s Health Office (‘Magistrato alla Sanità’) in 1479 illustrate the questions and problems that concern me in this chapter. In both cases, the Health Office needed to decide whether a particular individual had died of plague. The clinical and physical details provided in these reports are striking, steeped in detailed medical and epidemiological observations. Even though the content of these civic death registers is compelling, the record format and the language of the court suggest that these reports would be better situated in a juridical, rather than medical, context.

The first report, submitted on 5 May 1479, concerned Venturino, a sixteen-year-old servant or retainer (‘famulus’) of Lord Azzone Visconti. Visually assessing the boy’s body post mortem, the primary physician for the Sanità established a cause of death. Giovanni Catelano judged – ‘Iudicio Cat[elani]’ – that Venturino’s cadaver was cachectic (or, emaciated, ‘cachechiam’) in appearance. It was also covered by very black and corrupted ‘measles’ (‘morbilis valde denigrates’) on both sides of the ‘anterior’ (ventral, ‘anterius parte corporis’) aspect of his body, visible on the abdomen, arms, chest, hands and on the digits ‘all the way to the nails’ (‘digitos usque ad ungues’). Catelano then added: ‘he died before the third day of his supposed relapse’ (‘extinctus citra tertiam sui fallacis lapsus’), not accepting that the death was caused by mistaken diagnosis: ‘nor was it likely that [his demise] was caused by the earlier fever’ (‘nec verisimile a decipiente et ipsa febre exeuntum fuisse’). At some point, discussion about the duration of the young man’s actual cause of death must have occurred.

Although this particular record entry does not reveal office procedures, contemporary legislative evidence shows that community physicians and surgeons were required to report to an ‘anziano’ (parish or neighbourhood prior) all persons who were in their care for more than three days. An earlier initial notification to the Health Office could have established the onset of Venturino’s illness independently. If Venturino’s fever were the recurrence of an earlier illness, rather than a sudden departure from prior good health, plague as the cause of death could be doubted.