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> I found it heartening that people didn't immediately form the sort of murderous, paranoid, isolationist mobs that film and tv would have you believe. I wonde

> I found it heartening that people didn't immediately form the sort of murderous, paranoid, isolationist mobs that film and tv would have you believe. I wonder how much of that was due to ignorance about how the disease spread. Knowing what we do about pandemics these days, I could see modern people being far more reclusive and distrustful of outsiders than people were back then.

Noseshine 10y ago
They knew that people could spread the disease. History of Quarantine - http://www.cdc.gov/quarantine/historyquarantine.html http://www.cdc.gov/quarantine/historyquarantine.html > The practice of quarantine, as we know it, began during the 14th century > in an effort to protect coastal cities from plague epidemics. The Origin of Quarantine - http://cid.oxfordjournals.org/content/35/9/1071.long http://cid.oxfordjournals.org/content/35/9/1071.long > societies have, since ancient times, used strategies to isolate persons with > disease from unaffected persons. Some of the earliest references to these > strategies are found in the books of the Old Testament. > ... > The profound impact of the epidemic (the plague) led to the institution of > extreme infection-control measures. For example, in 1374, Viscount Bernabo... > declared that every person with plague be taken out of the city into the > fields, there to die or to recover.