![]() ![]() Declaring the end of a plague was a matter of good information. Italian public health boards of the 17th century were a kind of information network mobilized to define the emergence and course of an epidemic they needed to establish preventive measures as well as find potential solutions. As scientists from around the world race to find treatment and a vaccine for COVID-19, are there lessons from the past that are applicable today?Ī productive scientific network creates collaborations that are not simply local but benefits from the aggregation of resources, knowledge and perspectives from multiple locations. You have studied the history of scientific networks and the spread of news and information. But first, they had to survive this disease – medical practitioners were an especially vulnerable population. How did people get this disease? Why did some survive and so many die? Why did their therapies fail? Fundamentally, it led physicians to pay closer attention to what they could learn directly from bodies and the environmental factors contributing to disease in addition to what they also learned from books. The inability of 14th-century medicine to prevent plague from devastating societies throughout Eurasia posed a challenge to the explanatory power of their science. In what ways did the Black Death change medicine and scientific research? They just didn’t know why because they had no understanding of viruses, let alone the idea of bacterial infection. They were at times perceived to foment “bad air” (the word “malaria” literally means that), though there was some understanding that animals and textiles might also be sources of infection. Early modern states took a greater interest in policing health, especially among the poor, displaced, and foreign inhabitants who could not claim citizenship. The medicalized vision of public health became much more common during 17th-century outbreaks of plague and other diseases than in the 14th century. Eventually, it led to a bureaucracy charged with maintaining a healthy society. The repeated return of plague became a reason to invest more specifically in hospitals and to repurpose leprosaria, whose population had declined, by turning them into “pest houses” on the edge of cities such as Venice. It also encompassed the infrastructure that contributed to society’s well-being in general, in Italy and elsewhere. The idea of public health – health as a common and collective good – predates the Black Death and was never only about disease. How did the bubonic plague change the relationship between science, government and society? Forty made more sense to physicians who read Hippocrates on the typical length of a highly contagious disease and also knew, as Christians, that this was the duration of Lenten fasting. The first known legislation (by the Venetians) in 1377 only specified thirty days but it evolved into forty, which is what quarantina means. “Quarantine” is a specific legacy of how late medieval and Renaissance cities responded to plague, not during the initial pandemic of 1346-53, but after its return. Since antiquity, people have debated whether to remain or flee during an epidemic, and how to prevent others from coming. Findlen recently authored a review essay, “ What Would Boccaccio Say About COVID-19?” about the Florentine humanist’s experience with the Black Death in Renaissance Italy.Īre there any parallels between how we’re managing COVID-19 today and how Italians thwarted the bubonic plague in the 14th-century? I hope this reminds us to be creative and resilient with our own challenges,” said Findlen, whose research examines how the early history of science, medicine and technology are central to the understanding contemporary society.įindlen is the Ubaldo Pierotti Professor of Italian History in the School of Humanities and Sciences and director of the Suppes Center for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology. Earlier societies repeatedly found ways to recover from the impact of disease, with far fewer resources than we have today. “The history of pandemics – and not only plague – puts our fears about COVID-19 in perspective. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. She also talked about the origins of the word “quarantine” and Giovanni Filippo Ingrassia, whom Findlen likened to a Renaissance version of Anthony Fauci, director of the U.S. (Image credit: Sunny Scott)Īs the world confronts another global pandemic, Findlen spoke to us about the problems Renaissance Italians faced related to the Black Death, including ones that might seem familiar to us today, such as the difficulties of reliably reporting the disease, misinformation campaigns, and political tensions between states around their response. Paula Findlen is the Ubaldo Pierotti Professor of Italian History in the School of Humanities and Sciences.
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