The Dreaded Pox Sex and Disease in Early Modern London

'Olivia Weisser's succinct, brilliant history of the pox centers venereal disease as a key component of life in early modern London and a new pathway through which to understand many aspects of big city life. What often seems secret to us was a mundane reality to Londoners. Weisser provocatively argues that the pox was a leading edge of modern disease patterns. In lively prose, she explores the world of the pox from the perspective of ordinary people managing and shaping the experience of infection and its stigma in ways that were both close to home and embedded in the expanding global imperial marketplace.' Julie Hardwick, author of Sex in an Old Regime City: young workers and intimacy in France, 1660-1789