Medical care in early modern Venice

In early modern Venice, a wide range and large number of people offered care to the sick. This study utilizes Venice’s civic death registers to assess when and why the sick and dying accessed medical care, and how this changed over the course of the early modern period. The detailed registers permit consideration of the profile of medical practitioners, key aspects of patient identity, the involvement of institutions in the provision of medical care, and the relationship between type of illness and the propensity of the sufferer to seek medical support. This study assesses the type, number, density and distribution of practitioners in the city. Recourse to medical care was affected by age, social status and type of illness. A web of institutions increased levels of medical engagement amongst those of lower social status. Recourse to medical care by adults increased to a high level during the seventeenth century, and became near-universal by the end of the eighteenth century

I protagonisti dei Mendicanti tra cura e carità

The Mendicanti was a flexible institution which adapted to circumstances throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. This essay aims to look beyond those who were responsible for the construction and administration of San Lazzaro dei Mendicanti to examine the profile and identities of the residents of the complex, and their interactions with the city beyond it. The intended residential profile as specified in documents from the earliest years of the hospital’s activity is compared with evidence from the Mendicanti’s catastici about who was actually there at various points in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Second, the process by which people entered the institution, and the wide range of reasons for which they left it are assessed. Third, education, work, healthcare and religious practices are identified as key facets of daily life in the institution. The experiences of the residents of the Mendicanti shed light on the nature of care and charity in early modern Venice