Tra medicina empirica e intercessioni. L'epidemia di difterite nella città di Nardò tra 1634 e 1635

The study could be seen as the chronicle of an epidemic, the so-called cane sickness, which in a few months struck the children of the city of Nardò (Lecce) between 1634 and 1635, attacking the first airways and quickly leading to death by suffocation. The annotations taken from the Liber Mortuorum, kept in the cathedral of Nardò, promptly document the spread of diphtheria, at the time faced with symptomatic therapy and with the intercession of the saints. Equally, as well as based on the data of immediate experience and practice, the few rules of hygiene and prophylaxis adopted in the face of this and other infections were empirical. At that time, modern medical science and those technologies that today allow real progress in the knowledge of these diseases and of the therapies useful to fight them were still far away.