This 17th-century plague diary hits a little too close to home
Diaries can be an important time capsule to disease-fighting practices. (Kvkrillow/Deposit Photos/)Ute Lotz-Heumann is an associate professor and director of the Division for Late Medieval and Reformation Studies at the University of Arizona. This story originally featured on The Conversation.In early April, writer Jen Miller urged New York Times readers to start a coronavirus diary.“Who knows,” she wrote, “maybe one day your diary will provide a valuable window into this period.”During a different pandemic, one 17th-century British naval administrator named Samuel Pepys did just that. He fastidiously kept a diary from 1660 to 1669—a period of time that included a severe outbreak of the bubonic plague in London. Epidemics have always haunted humans, but rarely do we get such a detailed glimpse into one person’s life during a crisis from so long ago.There were no Zoom meetings, drive-through testing, or ventilators in 17th-century London. But Pepys’ diary reveals that there...