Recent epidemics, from H1N1 to Ebola, have intensified, in popular perception and scientific reflection, the awareness of spreading disease. In historical studies, the awareness is contributing to a more focussed interest in the processes and agents of transmission. The tightening preoccupation with physical or ‘objective’ aspects of epidemics may cause a blurring of the context, while human causes and effects are relegated to a distant periphery. In addition, the narrower focus leads some historians to the anachronism of reading modern precision into earlier mentions of contagion, and others to the ahistorical assumption that public health is the immediate or sole objective of any official measure in epidemics. These tendencies, while most evident in the vibrant discourse on bubonic plague, also shape views on the history of Hansen's disease. Views on the early impact of leprosy on society, moreover, reflect the fashionable fascination with medieval ‘marginality’ when they place a one-sided emphasis on the exclusion of lepers and on their treatment as a group. A general aim of this essay is to broaden the understanding of communal responses to leprosy, at least of those that left an imprint in urban records. The more precise aim is to illuminate dimensions of ‘sanitary policing’ beyond the obvious issues of health, contagion, and sequestration.

Visitatio leprosorum

Official records of examinations and their outcomes concretely document the complex diversity in the treatment of lepers by society.