The Milan Plague Epidemic of 1630 - sociopolitical, rather than a biological, event?

The history books tell us that in 1630, a plague epidemic hit the city of Milan.

In 2018, David Crowe (who sadly died from cancer in July 2020) discussed this event in episode 192 of his podcast, which can be listened to here.

The blurb for the episode - in which he focuses on a famous 1648 report by Alessandro Tadino “Account of the origin and daily events of the great contagious plague that followed in Milan” reads as follows:

It might seem strange to revisit the Milan Plague of 1629-1632 but David asks questions that may never have been asked before: Why was the illnesses thought to be infectious in the 1600s?

Did those who wrote a report afterwards have any evidence for the infectious theory? Why do we still think it is infectious when we probably would not believe anything else claimed by writers of that age.

You can read the 1648 report (in Italian) here:

http://theinfectiousmyth.com/ReportOnMilanEpidemic-1648-Tadino.pdf

[The Tadino report is no longer available at that URL but is archived here.]

Crowe ultimately suggests that factors like famine, poverty, and healthcare policy might play a more significant role than solely infectious agents.

One particularly fascinating observation was that the "monatti" (those handling the sick and dead) reportedly did not fall ill; Crowe suggests that this could be due to better nutrition due to their continuing pay during a famine.

In 2023, a group of researchers in Milan, Pavia and NYC, Galli et al, digitized and analyzed the data relating to the deaths experienced in the City at that time. Their paper “A spatiotemporal reconstruction of the 1630 plague epidemic in Milan” can be found here.

These authors echoed Crowe’s hypotheses. They noted that the observed variations in the epidemic's progression across different areas of Milan reflected neighborhood characteristics.

The study revealed that the epidemic evolved differently among the areas of the city.

Indeed, we were able to group the parishes of the city (comparable with modern neighborhoods) in two groups based on their epidemiological curves.

These different epidemiological progressions could reflect socio-economical and/or demographic features specific of the neighborhoods, opening questions about the relationship between these features and the evolution of epidemics in the pre-modern period.

Sounds familiar?

In 2022 I wrote the below article for Panda, sharing a temporospatial analysis of deaths in spring 2020 in Lombardy, which failed to find the hallmarks one would expect if a spreading pathogen had been responsible for the waves of deaths reported by the authorities.

Were the unprecedented excess deaths curves in Northern Italy in spring 2020 caused by the spread of a novel deadly virus?

I decided to “feed” NotebookLM with the above 3 sources; the fascinating audio output above is the result.