Scrutinium Physico-Medicum Contagiosae Luis quae Pestis Dicitur

In the year 1656, when the most populous city of Naples was attacked by a most atrocious plague, unheard of in all centuries, and had—in the course of a single semester—horrendously and formidably slaughtered nearly three hundred thousand people, it happened by some fate, or by an ill-advised necessity of commerce, that Rome at the same time also sustained a certain calamity, albeit much milder than the Neapolitan one, through the seeds of a contagious pestilence brought into it by I know not what clandestine negotiation. Having struggled with this for a year and more, the city would undoubtedly have derived a further fatal propagation had it not been timely suppressed, and finally ceased its raging, through the piety, prudence, and incredible care and solicitude of our Most Holy Lord, ALEXANDER VII. In this state of affairs, since everyone, terrified by the pervasive image of death, was seeking with anxiety and solicitude antidotes that might be useful for salvation against so atrocious an evil—for those seized by the pestiferous plague were so di-