Whether it is called the plague, the Black Death, or the Coronavirus, widespread disease has a way of generating fear and outright terror among those living within its invisible presence.  Epidemics, such as the pestilence that afflicted the Iberian Peninsula of Spain during the late sixteenth century still resonate with historical truths that can be felt five hundred years later. All epidemics can induce a psychological fear that occurs when humans experience the vulnerability of their potential death. While the science of health over the last five hundred years has drastically improved, an examination of historical plagues shows us that the visceral experience of human fear has remained unchanged. 

The eminent fear of being infected by another person was something Ruth MacKay shows us in the book, Life in a Time of Pestilence. The fear of infection is something that we live with today, despite the advanced knowledge and scientific understanding of germ theory, vaccines, and N95 masks.  Before Lysol Wipes and Clorox bleach, 500 years ago, people used vinegar to disinfectant patios and surfaces and its potent smell was thought to cleanse the foul air that held the scent of death.  Dr. Luis Mercado in 1589 predicted that fear of sickness would cause people to abandon those they love to “the most cruel and fatal illness that can befall them . . .” (10).  And they did. Moreover, towns shut down, people confined themselves to their homes, and large celebratory gatherings were canceled.  The fear of contracting a deadly disease altered humans’ relationships; as it does today, people isolate themselves from the ones they love to protect themselves from a virus they hate. 

We may understand more fully how a virus is transmitted today, but the fear of the transmission is still genuine.  Fear alters the way humans interact. Even going to the grocery store has become an anxiety-inducing experience. Today shoppers don facemasks as a protective barrier from others. They stand behind plastic dividers to check out and do not stop to chat. Masks and plastic barriers prevent people from getting close to one another. Castilians in some towns ingeniously used a lazy Susan device so that goods and money could be transported from one person to another without touching or nearing one another for fear of catching the plague. Money was placed in vinegar before being handled, and merchants and patrons stood on opposite sides of a ditch to keep a fair distance from one another.  Fear causes humans, who are social creatures, to scurry away from one another, lock their doors and endure the solitude that penetrates the psyche of those living through the terror of a wide-spreading pestilence.

Past humans may appear to us in the present as different, odd, and backward, their medical beliefs archaic and perhaps ridiculous. But the feeling fear transcends time.  Fear connects us on a human level and bonds us to those who lived before.  While we may not understand the laws, punishments, and healing methods of people who lived during the Castilian plague five hundred years ago, we can understand their fear. For it is the same fear we feel now. 

Ruth, MacKay.  Life in a Time of Pestilence: The Great Castilian Plague of 1596-1601, (Cambridge University Press, 2019).