The observation that a relevant part of a population is simultaneously sick is quite ancient. Nevertheless, the explanation and characterization of such phenomenon, namely at the medical framework, had changed throughout the time. Hippocrates, the most influential doctor in European medicine until the end of the 18th century, described, under the name of epidemy, diverse endemic situations, and attributed them to the peculiar “constitution” of the place affected in a certain moment. But he did not approach specifically the phenomenon of the transmission of a disease by means of the contact of healthy persons with someone affected by a disease. So, the first description of an epidemy, by the historian Thucydides, has no parallel in the medical writings of his time. In any case, it motivated the retrospective effort of relevant doctors, as Galen, aiming to explain the phenomenon of disease’s transmission. The theory of contagion is relatively recent, being formulated by Girolamo Fracastoro in his De contagione (1546). This Physician and humanist received the word contagion from the intellectual Latin tradition and converted it into a central concept of medical science and practice.

Although the last decades witnessed major advances on the study of historical epidemiology, particularly the plague, the impact and consequences of the Black Death in Portugal remain largely unknown. This paper aims to propose a chronology of introduction and spread of the epidemic in Portuguese territory, offering a first attempt of reconstitution of infection routes and chronology. Although direct documentary references are scarce, they provide enough information to present a first draft destined to be improved, corrected, or contradicted by future research.

The goal of this article is to analyse how the medieval Man faced the challenges to his health and wellbeing in the late medieval Coimbra city and region. We start to describe the treatment and care given to the sick in their urban and social environment, focusing on those provided in Coimbra and Montemor-o-Velho hospitals. Finally, we will examine the measures taken by civil authorities to control plague outbreaks and other contagious diseases, like leprosy.

In this paper we present several measures taken in Lisbon to prevent contagion by the plague, from the ships that arrived at its port. Some of the legislation that was enacted from the 15th century onwards will be analysed, especially to control, from the health point of view, the arriving travellers and to ensure the isolation of those who were a potential threat. Special attention will be paid to two regiments written at the end of the Sixties, regulating, in a detailed way, how to carry out such control.

Pre-capitalist societies have been hit by several epidemics, notably the frequent epidemic cycles of plague since the outbreak of the great epidemic of 1348, promoting sudden and systematic increases in mortality rates, and causing destruction, fear and social chaos. In Portugal, there was at least one epidemic every decade throughout the period. The disease was a factor of destabilization and social disorder that caused royalty to promote clashes through various actions. In this article, we rehearsed the proposition that the public health policy forged by the state contained in itself an intrinsic expression of what Achille Mbembe characterized as «necropolitics».

This article has a double objective. On the one hand, it analyses the different stages of medicalization that took place in Europe since the late Middle Ages. On the other hand, it’s an approach to the changes experienced in the meaning and development of the hospitals in the past and the social role they have played. Both processes are examined from the longue durée, emphasizing the historical conditions that determined them. Among them, those related to the great epidemics such as the Black Death.