Welcome to this website.  I created this site to make my articles available to other Independent Scholars.  I hope to add other materials relevant to the history of contagionism and contagious diseases.

The picture is a detail of a portrait by William Hogarth thought to be of his friend Dr. John Fothergill   As a member of the Society of Friends, Fothergill refused to sit for his portrait, so Hogarth probably painted him from memory.

Margaret DeLacy                                                                                                        02/18/2010

 

ARTICLES

 

Influenza Research and the Medical Profession in Eighteenth Century Britain

The Conceptualization of Influenza in Eighteenth-Century Britain: Specificity and Contagion

Benjamin Franklin and eighteenth-century contagionism

Puerperal Fever in Eighteenth-Century Britain

with A. J. Cain, A Linnaean thesis concerning Contagium vivum: the 'Exanthemata viva' of John Nyander and its place in contemporary thought (.pdf from the National Library of Medicine)