Читать книгу The Power of Plagues - Irwin W. Sherman - Страница 36

More than 2,000 years ago—long before there was Pasteur’s germ theory of disease—the Greek physician Hippocrates of Cos warned that for certain diseases (particularly plague) it was “dangerous to associate with those afflicted.” And in A.D. 549, during an outbreak of plague in Constantinople, the emperor Justinian enacted laws calling for the delay and isolation of travelers coming from regions where there was evidence of this disease. Therefore, in spite of a lack of appreciation that microbes could cause disease, those living in medieval Europe (and dying from the Black Death) recognized that the disease to which they were exposed was contagious and that the only way to preserve the public health would be to isolate the sick totally. When plague reached Europe in 1347, ports on the Adriatic and Mediterranean Seas were the first to deny entry to ships coming from pestilential areas, especially Turkey, the Middle East, and Africa. As early as 1348, Florence, one of the most plague-ridden cities, issued a restriction called quarantine on travelers and goods. The Venetian republic formally excluded infected and suspected ships in 1348, and in 1377 the first official quarantine station was established in Dubrovnik. There persons and ships were isolated on a nearby island for 30 days to await signs of illness or continued good health. Later, other port cities established quarantine stations on shore or on neighboring islands. But even with quarantine, and with 90% of the passengers dying aboard ship, the populations of the port cities were decimated by plague. Quarantine was sometimes employed within the confines of the city itself, and oftentimes the sick were shut up in their homes with the uninfected members of the family. Under these conditions, household quarantine did not prevent the spread of the disease; rather, it resulted in higher mortality.

Plague undermined confidence in local church leaders, and many people left on pilgrimages to seek salvation elsewhere. Pilgrimages increased the number of travelers on the highways, and these strangers provoked hostility; at the same time they were also the “seeds” for spreading the infection. To restrict the movements of such strangers, cordons sanitaires were established. Towns closed their gates to travelers. These measures circumscribed plague to certain towns while protecting others. Restricting the long-distance movement of people and baggage from infected cities may also have helped to reduce the spread of the disease.