This illustration shows a medical chart that incorporates the signs of the zodiac and their importance for different parts of the human body.

Point to Ponder:

Astrology and medicine were very much linked at the time of the plague outbreak. Why do you think people of this period made such associations between the physical human body on earth and the positions of the stars in the heavens?

| A Brief Modern Biological Explanation of the Plague |

| Return to Pre-Modern Science |

Source: From Johannes de Ketham's Fasciculus Medicinae (1522), Biblioteca Casanatense, Rome.