Centuries before imposing unprecedented measures to contain the deadly coronavirus outbreak, Italy led the fight against deadly epidemics with a grab bag of techniques from herb-stuffed face masks to family-wide quarantines. The Black Death reached Europe in October 1347 by way of the Sicilian port of Messina, brought in by ships that had transitted Genoa from Caffa - or Feodosia in current-day Crimea.
In the space of several months the epidemic spread through Italy and into France via port cities such as Marseille. It then spread to the rest of western Europe, wiping out an estimated 30 percent of the continent's population by 1351. Subsequent waves of the disease hit almost every decade before disappearing mysteriously some three centuries later.
CURSE FROM GOD Dismissing the Black Death as a curse from God and blaming it on pollution, Italian doctors proved incapable of halting the illness.
Doctors would show up in masks shaped liked birds' beaks stuffed with herbs, spices and camphor, to purify the air. However their long tunics actually protected the fleas, which eventually turned out to be responsible for transmitting the Yersinia pestis bacteria, which caused the Black Death.
POLITICIANS TAKE CONTROL With the scientists at a loss, political leaders in city states of northern Italy, including Venice and Milan, tried to contain successive waves of epidemics of the plague.
The late Italian historian Carlo M Cipolla wrote of "the emergence and the development in northern Italy of exceptionally advanced institutions and health service organisations," from the mid-14th century to the early 16th century.
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