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The Old World’s Medieval Untouchables and Other Random Historical Facts

Khalid Elhassan March 17, 2020 33 min

Pancho Villa - Mexican Revolution — General Pancho Villa before a firing squad in 1912. Wikimedia

3. Mysterious Daubs Lead to City-Wide Panic

torture during the plague epidemic at milan, 1630. wellcome m0000790 — Execution of suspected poisoners and plague-spreaders in Milan. Wikimedia Commons

Milan’s health officials inspected the mysterious daubs that had appeared on city walls, but found nothing harmful in them. They concluded that the markings were a prank by some mischievous people with a sick sense of humor, out to get some laughs out of the citizens’ fears.

Official reassurances did not assure, however. Taking the mysterious daubs as a sign that the expected poison attack had finally arrived, Milan’s citizens went into a citywide bout of mass hysteria. They began accusing random people of acts of poisoning, ranging from passersby on the streets to various nobles to Cardinal Richelieu of France or general Wallenstein, commander of the armies of the Holy Roman Empire in the then-raging Thirty Years War.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.