>> So, we don't know exactly where the plague came from.
We know where it first entered Europe.
And if you don't know about the plague, it's,
it's this terrible disease which spread across Europe in the 1300s and 1400s.
And right up until the 1650s.
And by estimations, one-third of all Europe.
Died because of this disease.
In some places it was as much as 60% or 70%, that's really great power to our
cause from, England to show that so many people died.
We know it entered Europe in Genoa, and then very rapidly spread.
And the suspicion is it came from, the Far East and, it's a disease which
is also spread by fleas or rats, so it's a complicated disease transmission.
And it's not necessarily the case that it just went away.
We can still have plague in some locations, and, some studies here in
the U.S. look at plague in prairie dog systems, that Peter knows a lot about.
So, in that case, it didn't disappear, it's still, problem, but
the actual pandemic did pass over.
But it took quite a long time,
a couple of hundred years, of successive large events before it all went away.
Why did it go away?
Well people had a, had a greater insight into, control.
So we know from,
a lot of really good historical records in Florence and, try Italy, about how the,
how to, the municipalities got together, and mandated quarantine events.
Quarantine, is a word that comes from the Italian, [FOREIGN], which is 40 days.
So, individuals were able to put into place [CROSSTALK] aspects of
control of disease.
So we, we, we overcame that, but it took a lot of thinking on the fly.
>> Yeah.
And actually, I think, and, and
an important point in the case study of plague was that this was at
a time before there was a pharmaceutical solution to that, right?
We, we were, a lot of the concern with, Ebola and SARS and
other emerging diseases now is, how can we rapidly develop the appropriate drugs.
The appropriate treatments for that.
But I think the example in play suggests that, that non-pharmaceutical controls and
cultural and behavioral controls can be really very important, in stemming the,
in stemming this transmission.
>> So when I used to walk to school in Britain everyday.
Had to walk past the plague, houses.
>> [CROSSTALK] Was it uphill both, uphill both ways?
[LAUGH].
>> And there were, [CROSSTALK] there were these,
there were these plague houses all throughout the British countryside.
>> Yeah. >> Where these people were.
>> Mm. >> Actually sent.
>> Mm. >> But the impact,
on countries like Italy was phenomenal.
It took us like what was it 600 >> Right.
>> Years to recover!
>> Yeah. >> There were basically,
most people were dead!
>> Yes, yeah.
>> It was a huge impact.
>> [INAUDIBLE]. >> It seems to me that one of
the interesting things about the plague case and some of what's coming out of
west Africa at the moment is the fundamental knowledge of the biology.
How the transmission is working.
How the whole process is going.
That makes a huge difference to what you do.
And you know, plague times, it was all a mystery.
It was all this strange thinking about what was going on, nobody understood it.
Till we have the germ theory of infectious disease, it's very, very hard,
to control these things.
People used to think malaria came off the,
some smell of the swamps and, cholera was a nasty vegetative process.
You now, it's weird things and when you understand things, you control the And
you see in west Africa now, that were the, where the understanding does not exist,
then there is awful problems controlling it.
>> But there's a lot of similarity between plague.
And the Ebola outbreak at the moment.
Because both of them are highly spatial.
So they would get, come into a town.
There would be a burning here, there would be an outbreak of the disease, and
then it would flip like that, a spark from a fire to another town.
And it would set it off again.
And that's exactly what's happening with Ebola.
because people are rushing back to their villages.
Places to get their health support from their family.
That's setting up >> It's very interesting though
in the absence of the information that we have both the how to get the theme but
also just the general germ theory.
>> Yeah.
>> Quarantine is what works the best.
>> [LAUGH] So I, I, they had a plan for that.
So, so even in Roman Empire, we knew that malaria,
which is again an Italian word for bad air, we knew what was causing the swamps.
And Vitruvius, the Roman architect, built swamps into various pla,
built barracks in various places to avoid the presence of malaria.
Al Rashid, an architect in, in Bagdad used to nail rotting meat on, on planks of wood
to decide where he would best situate a hospital in Bagdad, eighth century Bagdad.
So, we did have inklings of it, even though, of course, germ theory
did come around, and, and then get to
>> Well, and I still think the most fundamental.
Environmental advances are probably helping advance malaria,
It's figuring out there was a mosquito boom.
>> Hm. >> Yeah.
>> More than the drugs,
more than anything else.
The mosquito borne thing just needs sampling