२ मार्च, २०२०

"In​ the cold autumn of 1629, the plague came to Italy. It arrived with the German mercenaries (and their fleas)..."

"... who marched through the Piedmont countryside. The epidemic raged through the north, only slowing when it reached the natural barrier of the Apennines. On the other side of the mountains, Florence braced itself. The officials of the Sanità, the city’s health board, wrote anxiously to their colleagues in Milan, Verona, Venice, in the hope that studying the patterns of contagion would help them protect their city.... The poor were judged not only careless but physically culpable.... Along with the poor, other marginalised groups were thought to be 'inclined towards putrefaction.'...  Ordinary life​ was suspended during the epidemic.... The Sanità arranged the delivery of food, wine and firewood to the homes of the quarantined (30,452 of them). Each quarantined person received a daily allowance of two loaves of bread and half a boccale (around a pint) of wine. On Sundays, Mondays and Thursdays, they were given meat. On Tuesdays, they got a sausage seasoned with pepper, fennel and rosemary. On Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays, rice and cheese were delivered; on Friday, a salad of sweet and bitter herbs. The Sanità spent an enormous amount of money on food because they thought that the diet of the poor made them especially vulnerable to infection, but not everyone thought it was a good idea... [S]ome elite Florentines worried that quarantine 'would give [the poor] the opportunity to be lazy and lose the desire to work, having for forty days been provided abundantly for all their needs.'... When the epidemic finally ended, about 12 per cent of the population of Florence had died. This was a considerably lower mortality rate than other Italian cities: in Venice 33 per cent of the population; in Milan 46 per cent; while the mortality rate in Verona was 61 per cent....."

From "Inclined to Putrefaction" by Erin Maglaque in The London Review of books (reviewing "Florence Under Siege: Surviving Plague in an Early Modern City" by John Henderson).

३३ टिप्पण्या:

DavidUW म्हणाले...

Quarantines work.

wild chicken म्हणाले...

Brava Firenze

Michael K म्हणाले...

"Quarantine" is derived from 40 days, the length of time the victims were kept away from the healthy.

chuck म्हणाले...

The curious thing is that the epidemic ended. Why was that?

Lucid-Ideas म्हणाले...

I consider myself something of an amateur 'expert' of the 30 years war. It is one of my favorite periods of study and I've written several papers on it, including a critique of challenges posed by non-standard ideological models, alliances, and their effect on civilian polarization during wartime, for the Army War College.

Disease was far and away the biggest killer between '14 and '49. Some German towns, especially central and the Rhine, lost as much as 50% of their population - and some more than that. In German cultural discourse, there's a concept called 'Sonderweg', which roughly translates as the overarching political and social journey of the Germanic peoples over time. Most Germans consider the 30 Years War as more formative to Sonderweg and having more impact than any other period, even WWI-WWII (which incidentally, is often regarded as the 2nd 30 years War). Only the Bubonic Plague was statistically worse, at least from what info we have.

MadisonMan म्हणाले...

The curious thing is that the epidemic ended
They always do. There is enough genetic variability in people that some are always more resistant to an epidemic, for whatever reason.

narciso म्हणाले...

the original plague came from a war between venetian and genoan settlements in the black sea in the 14th century,

Beasts of England म्हणाले...

Only the Italians could make quarantine taste so delicious.

tcrosse म्हणाले...

The Decameron of Bocaccio tells of a group whose answer to the plague of 1348 was to GTFO of Florence.

chuck म्हणाले...

They always do.

Yet Verona lost 61% and Florence only 12%, so I don't think natural human resistance was the key. If the plague was spread by fleas carried by rats, how was that controlled? Did the rats and fleas die? Were other sanitation measures taken?

OK, google informs me that perhaps rats were not the carriers. A quarantine would work if humans were the primary carriers, fleas had a limited lifetime without a host, and the dead were handled correctly.

joshbraid म्हणाले...

The effects of the Black Death were huge in the formation of the Reformation and Counter Reformation. Yet most people, I would think, have little to no idea of it totally reshaped Europe.

Ken B म्हणाले...

I guess we are supposed to feel superior to those who used the phrase “inclined to putrefaction.” So judgmental don’t you know. Yet empirically they were, weren’t they? Crowded, undernourished. No one understood disease in 1629. Pasteur and Koch were 250 years in the future. So all they had to go on were simple empirical patterns and hopelessly wrong dogmas. Of course the reviewer favors the dogmas ...

rcocean म्हणाले...

Hello Lucid, thanks the input. Didn't armies back then, have a huge army of camp followers that helped spread disease?

Temujin म्हणाले...

Learn new things everyday. Now I want to read that book.

rcocean म्हणाले...

Even as late as the Civil War (1865) people didn't understood germ theory or how malaria was spread. They knew large numbers of flies and dirty camps meant more disease, and that foul water also meant cholera and dysentery. Swamps - with their "bad air" - caused malaria. Also that if you had certain diseases you needed to be quarantined. But that was as far as it went.

Water full of germs was thought to be OK, if it looked clean and clear. Joe the Cook could be a thyroid carrier but if he was asymptomatic, nothing was done. As a result, more men died from diarrhea, dysentery, and typhus than were killed in battle.

rcocean म्हणाले...

BTW, bringing up Koch and Pastuer shows the stupidity of Jonah Goldberg's argument that "Capitalism" was responsible for all the progress during the 19th Century. These great men, along with Reed who conquered Yellow Fever, weren't motivated by $$$. None of them got rich.

narciso म्हणाले...

actually carlos finlay, discovered the aedes aegypti mosquito, but otherwise your point is sound

chuck म्हणाले...

weren't motivated by $$$

Great scientists are motivated by great curiosity, high IQ and imagination are not sufficient in themselves. One could ask why Europe was filled with curious people when other civilizations were not. The ancient Greeks were also famously curious and asked lots of questions.

Caligula म्हणाले...

Our public health apparat seems far more interested in social justice 'medicine' than in containing dangerous contagious diseases. Thus gun violence, inequality, more funds for public schools are all deemed "public health" problems, but, that nastly l'il virus (along with multidrug-resistant TB and other old contagions making a comeback), not so much.

As well as offensive speech: it might cause high blood pressure, perhaps even trigger a stroke: thus, "hate speech" is a public health problem (and therefore not protected by the First Amendment).

Public health authorities are fully Woke and, since public health resources are inevitably limited, one must have priorities.

Caligula म्हणाले...

Our public health apparat seems far more interested in social justice 'medicine' than in containing dangerous contagious diseases. Thus gun violence, inequality, more funds for public schools are all deemed "public health" problems, but, that nastly l'il virus (along with multidrug-resistant TB and other old contagions making a comeback), not so much.

As well as offensive speech: it might cause high blood pressure, perhaps even trigger a stroke: thus, "hate speech" is a public health problem (and therefore not protected by the First Amendment).

Public health authorities are fully Woke and, since public health resources are inevitably limited, one must have priorities.

MadisonMan म्हणाले...

Yet Verona lost 61% and Florence only 12%, so I don't think natural human resistance was the key.
Florence fed the poor, which amped up their immune systems.

mikee म्हणाले...

What was the rat and flea population of those cities? Same, or different, from each other?
What were the sewer systems like? The buildings? The food storage systems? The weather? The market places? The carting systems for waste? The livery stable locations? The bathing habits?

There are so many factors that could affect the differential spread of disease, city versus city, that feeding the poor, while maybe important, is not proven by this admiration in the present day to be the main factor in Florence having a low mortality rate.

Two-eyed Jack म्हणाले...

I guess that March is Black Death History Month.

johns म्हणाले...

Narciso
I thought that the plague came from Asia along trade routes

johns म्हणाले...

It is an article of faith with the Left that America is evil because so many native Americans were felled by disease. but the number of people killed by the plague in Europe is far higher, and it also was a disease that arrived due to trade contacts. Even the most ridiculous estimates of how many indigenous people inhabited the Americas, the number who died from European diseases is less than the similar experience in Europe.

Lucid-Ideas म्हणाले...

@rcocean

That as well as huge amounts of foraging and attacks against settlements resulted in setting off a refugee crisis not seen till the early 20th century. The soldiers would 'spread' the infection among townspeople who would then pack up and move it to other areas becoming ideal vectors.

narciso म्हणाले...

https://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/25294

narayanan म्हणाले...

1632 series - sanitation is major concern of Grantville transplantees as they try to survive

narayanan म्हणाले...

the phrase “inclined to putrefaction." >>>>> SEPSIS

narayanan म्हणाले...

@Blogger Caligula said...
________________
evidence for your thesis

An Obama Holdover in an Obscure Government Arm Helped Cause the Country’s Coronavirus Crisis???

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/03/obama-holdover-obscure-government-arm-helped-cause-daniel-greenfield/

narciso म्हणाले...

https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2020/03/coronavirus-takes-out-aide-to-irans-supreme-leader.php

Michael K म्हणाले...

Narciso
I thought that the plague came from Asia along trade routes


It began in China, as do most plagues. We are relearning that.

Leprosy is supposed to have come either with returning soldiers of Alexander (Many did not return) or with trade caravans.

Tuberculosis is very old and is found in Egyptian mummies. Small pox probably came from China or India, as it requires a large population to persist.

Michael K म्हणाले...

Thus gun violence, inequality, more funds for public schools are all deemed "public health" problems, but, that nastly l'il virus (along with multidrug-resistant TB and other old contagions making a comeback), not so much.

That's why the CDC is so f**ked up. The FDA is also a mess and has had a lot to do with the various scandals about China drugs.