What Can History Tell Us About Epidemics?

‘Strategies to cope with plague have formed the basis for later policies’

John Henderson, Professor of Italian Renaissance History at Birkbeck, University of London and author of Florence Under Siege: Surviving Plague in an Early Modern City (Yale, 2019)

News about the spread of and reactions to the coronavirus punctuates our daily lives, alternately creating fear and reassurance, as social media stirs feelings of panic, while the official line emphasises that the epidemic is under control.

But the phrases and themes which characterise official pronouncements are nothing new; they speak to centuries of reactions to epidemics, none of which is more vivid than plague. Indeed, strategies to cope with plague in pre-industrial Europe have formed the basis for later policies and are mirrored in current public health initiatives.