Epidemic or rather pandemic are words that are now very familiar to us. Let’s go back in time and see how the problem has been addressed in the past and focus on the best look during the epidemic.

The 1300 Pandemic in Europe

The black plague of 1347-53 was probably the first major epidemic in the world.

The plague came from Asia (probably the patient ZERO was from Mongolia) on the caravan routes reaching Caffa on the Black Sea. From there it arrived in Europe with a Genoese ship loaded with wheat. The first wjeat and plague downloading was in Messina (Sicily) and then and then it went up the Italian peninsula. In 1348 it invaded all of Europe!

In Florence the epidemic made its first victims in March (which at this point we can say it is not a very lucky month!) and exploded the following month. It continued to reap deaths until the end of September of that same 1348, when the infection began to gradually decrease (sources speak of escaped danger only the following autumn).

Boccaccio, the great chronicler of this plague in his famous “Decameron”, noted that it was quickly understood that “not only did being but also simply talking with the sick people gave the healthy ones infirmities or brought them death”.

Galen‘s medicine

The medicine of the Middle Ages was that of Galen which was based on the theory of the four humors. It was claimed that diseases were transmitted by the imbalance between the various moods of the body: blood, phlegm, yellow bile and black bile.

According to this medicine, the corruption of the air (think of the name of the malaria : mal = bad , aria = air) coming from the sewers or swampy waters or putrefactions would have created a kind of “poison” in the air capable of entering a healthy body through the pores of the skin.

For this it was necessary to protect yourself, especially to protect doctors.
And so the first PPE were invented.

Here what they wrote in a chronicle in the 17th century:

“Their masks have glass lenses
their beaks are stuffed with antidotes.
Unhealthy air cannot harm them,
nor does it alarm them. “

They were convinced that the long dress made with oilskin, the eyes holes covered with glass and above all the mask could make them immune to any disease. In fact, according to Galen, if you “breathed” perfumed essences, the miasma of the disease could not hit you.

The mask is therefore the essential PPE and therefor fundamental for the look at the time of the epidemic. Maybe it was just a little more difficult to produce.

In fact, it had a long beak inside of which dried flowers, lavender, thyme, myrrh, amber, mint leaves, camphor, cloves, garlic and sponges soaked in vinegar were inserted.

Last, but not least, even back then the choice that prevailed was social distancing.

Alvise Zen, a Venicain doctor during the 1630 epidemic, tells us that plague doctors were the only ones who could freely go out in the city. For all the others there was a perennial curfew with death penalty.

So no strolls near home, no shopping at supermarkets and no taking the dog out!

STAY HOME !!!!