Many people looked at all these facts—the symptoms, the sudden appearance of outsiders, the disproportionate burden on the lower classes—and surmised that cholera wasn’t a previously unknown disease at all, but a plot by the authorities to poison the urban poor.[32] This time Jews avoided the blame—even in eastern and central Europe where the feudal system persisted. Instead, popular suspicion focused on the authorities who led the public health response to the outbreak, as the power of the state had expanded enormously since the Black Death but had done little or nothing to improve most
...more
