Negotiation of remedies during the plague : alchemists, charlatans, health officials

At the height of the Roman plague of 1656, a Neapolitan alchemist, who had healed a handful of plague victims, asked to be paid 500 scudi a month; the Congregazione della sanità, overseeing the city’s response to the epidemic, was prepared to offer him a set sum for each sufferer he cured. How can we explain the interest on the part of the authorities in this and other medical remedies, and their willingness to negotiate over the health of the city’s inhabitants? This essay does not pretend to offer a definitive survey of epidemic in Rome, but instead will offers suggestions for future research, on the basis of work done for Italian cities during times of epidemic, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The essay will focus on work I have carried out on the control of plague by the health offices and Protomedicati, and the unceasing search for remedies perceived to be effective against it; the attitude of the authorities towards «charlatans» and the strategies employed by charlatans to sell their wares in time of the plague; and the reaction of public officials to novel medicines proposed to them at such times, in particular alchemical ones.