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Abstract: The article examines the printed texts published in Rome during the epidemic of 1656. Although differing, they are uniformly dedicated to members of the Chigi family. The underlying intention behind the commissioning and publication of these works was first to describe the epidemic and then to exalt the efforts by Alexander VII and the Curia put forward in controlling it. These treatises express widely divergent positions: from the extremes of the anti-contagionism on the part of the pontifical chief physician, Mattia Naldi to the atomism of Gregorio Rossi, who dedicated his work to Francesco Barberini. The texts written by surgeons and physicist doctors working in hospital structures confirm the existence in Rome of advanced clinical habits and scientific observations as part of an efficient institutional network providing assistance and treatment. Far from statically reflecting an antiquated society, the treatises on the plague in Rome in this period register and discuss the dramatic changes occurring at the time in medical theory and practice.