"It cannot be decernit quha are clean and quha are foulle." Responses to Epidemic Disease in Sixteenth and Seventeenth-Century Scotland

Abstract

In comparison with research in England and mainland Europe, research into the impact of epidemic disease on the economy, society and culture of 16th- and earlier 17th-century Scotland has progressed little since the 1960s, with most recent discussion recycling research from the 1930s and 1950s. An absence of prominent contemporary ‘plague literature’ and over-reliance on published record sources has served further to produce a skewed traditional account which presents epidemic as a primarily urban phenomenon with limited long-term consequences for the country generally. This paper offers a review of the evidence and challenges that traditional model, arguing instead that disease was one of the primary agencies for socio-economic dislocation and change in Scotland down to 1650.