Lazaretti, or plague hospitals, took on a central role in early modern responses to epidemic disease. An in-depth study of the Venetian lazaretti in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, this book asks what these hospitals can tell us about early modern medicine and society.

Jane L Stevens Crawshaw is Leverhulme Early Career Research Fellow in History at Oxford Brookes University. This is her first book.

Introduction; 1: 'From a distance it looks like a castle': First Impressions and Architectural Design; 2: The Sick-Poor; 3: 'Abandon hope, all you who enter here': Experiences of Staff and the Patients' Daily Routine; 4: Syrups and Secrets: Treating the Plague; 5: Dying in the Lazaretti; 6: Returning to the City; Conclusion; Epilogue