The ability to foresee the outbreak of epidemic disease, and to predict its course, is a highly coveted skill. Most often associated with statistical techniques, such efforts to improve the health of communities are thought to be exclusively modern. Public health more generally is often said to be categorically distinct from pre-modern medicine, which was interested above all in individual patients and rarely considered the broader health of a population. This article challenges these long-entrenched views by showcasing early modern astrologers at work on disease at the population level. Located at the intersection of medicine and mathematics, astrology was once a promising methodology for monitoring the health of the people. Astrologers made annual predictions about the diseases that would predominate in particular regions, disseminating their forecasts widely alongside advice on what should be done in response. Their ability to think in terms of relatively standardized ‘populations’ — alongside their attempts to correlate the incidence of disease with external factors — made astrologers prime candidates for developing novel approaches to epidemics. Before the epidemiologist there was the astrologer, who looked to the stars to find patterns between celestial configurations and major health events, using their findings to model the rise and fall of epidemics.

中文翻译：

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现代早期英格兰的占星术、瘟疫和预言：公共卫生史上被遗忘的一章

预见流行病爆发并预测其进程的能力是一项令人梦寐以求的技能。通常与统计技术相关联，这种改善社区健康的努力被认为是完全现代的。人们常说，更普遍的公共卫生与前现代医学截然不同，前现代医学首先对个体患者感兴趣，很少考虑人群的更广泛健康。这篇文章通过展示早期现代占星师在人口层面研究疾病来挑战这些根深蒂固的观点。占星术位于医学和数学的交叉点，曾经是一种很有前途的监测人们健康的方法。占星师每年都会预测特定地区将流行的疾病，广泛传播他们的预测以及关于应如何应对的建议。他们根据相对标准化的“人口”进行思考的能力——以及他们将疾病发生率与外部因素联系起来的尝试——使占星家成为开发新的流行病治疗方法的主要候选人。在流行病学家之前有占星家，他们通过观察星星来寻找天体配置和重大健康事件之间的模式，并利用他们的发现来模拟流行病的兴衰。