Health
Last updated: 29 August 2026
Health
What did they live through when sickness passed?
What this measure says
A silent register does not mean the deaths had stopped. In 1786 the priest writes that he no longer has time to keep his line: the curve falls while the epidemic rises. A gap in writing is read as a gap in writing, never as a lull.
From 1636 to 1799, 12 health crises pass through these towns. They are read here together: it is their return, more than any one of them, that tells what a life under the threat of plague was.
The figures
| Period | Health |
|---|---|
| 1625 | 2 |
| 1650 | 1 |
| 1675 | 1 |
| 1700 | 3 |
| 1725 | 2 |
| 1750 | 1 |
| 1775 | 2 |
| Crisis | Attested window | Deaths recorded in those years | Median yearly deaths in neighbouring years | People linked |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| The 1636 plague: Bethlehem | 1636 | 21 | 2 | 16 |
| Plague of 1643-1644: friars of the Custody of the Holy Land | 1643-1644 | 4 | 3 | 6 |
| The 1670 plague: Bethlehem and Jerusalem | 1670 | 46 | 7 | 52 |
| The 1693 plague: Bethlehem and Jerusalem | 1693 | 106 | 17.5 | 65 |
| The documented epidemic of 1702 (Bethlehem, Jerusalem and Ein Karem) | 1702 | 68 | 21 | 45 |
| The plague of 1710–1711: Bethlehem and Jerusalem | 1710-1711 | 121 | 26 | 50 |
| Plague of 1720-1721 (Bethlehem, Jerusalem, Ein Karem) | 1720-1721 | 115 | 26 | 115 |
| Plague of 1732 (Bethlehem, Jerusalem, Ein Karem) | 1732 | 39 | 30 | 0 |
| The 1741-1742 plague: Bethlehem and Jerusalem | 1741-1742 | 264 | 44 | 17 |
| The 1760 plague: Jerusalem and its surroundings | 1760 | 153 | 78 | 0 |
| Plague of 1786-1787 (Bethlehem, Jerusalem, Ein Karem) | 1786-1787 | 227 | 57 | 2 |
| Plague of 1799: Bethlehem | 1799 | 79 | 49.5 | 0 |
The sharpest crisis is The 1636 plague: Bethlehem. The registers there record 11 times more deaths than an ordinary year in the same neighbourhood.