pinball1970 said:
There are a 500 hundred years between the plague and the publication of germ theory of disease so its worth considering how people thought about disease and what caused it in the 14thC
Isolation was probably the only thing that would have made sense after traditional medicines, prayer had failed and anyone trying to attend to the sick died as well.
An example in the UK here below self-isolation of an entire village for over a year. Comparisons to COVID and implications to HIV immunity in this article.
One remedy according to legend from the link was drinking bacon fat (mistaken for water)
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-derbyshire-51904810
It's interesting to look at attempts to study the history of disease and the beliefs about causes and management. Despite our confidence in the germ theory, epidemiology and genetics, things keep changing and really, it's debatable how application of these ideas have helped, at least initially.
Plague is a good example and the desire to identify the source, does seem reminiscent of the debates over the source of Covid 19, there seems to be a natural resistance to the idea of circumstances coming together that allows a pathogen to spread, that puts us at the mercy of the fates. There is however some evidence that in some rural areas in China, outbreaks of a Covid 19 like illness have been occurring for some time but the Coronavirus involved was unknown, rather like most of them.
However, there is reasonable evidence that humans have experienced epidemics / pandemics of plague since the bronze age. The Black Death is estimated to have killed around 25 million people but over time it may have killed some 200 million. It seems a bit strange that rats got the blame, the plague bacillus kills both rats and their flea's, in fact a noticeable increase in rat deaths was considered a harbinger of an outbreak. It's now considered that it was primarily spread by human fleas and possibly by contaminated grain. It seems, rodents are their primary reservoir in nature and it remains common in rodent populations, across Africa and Asia and even in the USA.
Despite having no knowledge of germs, the primary containment methods are instantly recognisable, public gathering places were closed, the infected were isolated, their possessions, and even their homes were burned and animals were killed. These measures were enforced with extreme brutality, there were no appeals to individual rights, well none that worked, anyway. The few Drs that would deal with people, designed their own PPE, it might even be the case that some of the herbs they used acted as insect replants, they certainly protected from any liquid contamination. The people collecting corpses, who couldn't afford such luxury, had to be well paid and were often people who had recovered.
Remember, that as Alexander's armies marched towards Asia, his medics could predict, based on the Miasma theories, personnel losses to disease, based on the local geography, with considerable accuracy. If you marched through swampy lowlands, the poison miasma rising from the ground would kill quite a few, while the fresh mountain air was far healthier, so no change there either. These ideas might have been wrong but they were not adopted randomly, they often worked. The control of sinful behaviour, which usually meant sex, limited close intimate contact, this and the ability to persecute minorities served to give the majority people to blame. It may have been that only when international trade had been virtually shut down and the population density reduced that a sufficient reduction in the rate of infection (the R number) allowed the epidemic to die down.
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1715640115
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7513766/
