Part of a plague hospital: A dead man, patients, a physician, an attendant, friends, guard

The plague hospitals which were set up north of the Alps, following the Italian model, in the 16th century, were usually situated outside the city walls and served the quarantining of suffers (and thus the protection of the population) rather than their treatment. Plague sufferers were classified as “dangerously ill”, not to be treated in the city hospitals. In the German-speaking regions, however, a more widespread practice was to seal off dwellings in which the diseased were found.

Daniel Nikolaus Chodowiecki (1726–1801), Ein Teil eines Pest-Lazarets. Ein Toter, Kranke, ein Arzt, ein Aufwärter, Freunde, Postierung, copperplate, 1774, in: Fritzsch, Theodor (ed.): J. B. Basedows Elementarwerk mit den Kupfertafeln Chodowieckis u.a., kritische Bearbeitung in drei Bänden, Leipzig 1909, vol. 3; source: Wikimedia Commons, http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Chodowiecki_Basedow_Tafel_24_a.jpg?uselang=de, public domain.