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Comment by maxlybbert

2 days ago

The Black Death occurred when European medicine (at least for diseases) was still rudimentary. Plague doctors had pleasant-smelling herbs in their masks because that seemed like a reasonable defense against the disease. Leaches and bloodletting were common treatments ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humorism ). Later, there was something of a legend regarding Four Thieves Vinegar ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_thieves_vinegar ).

But they did eventually connect plague outbreaks to rats, and killed the rats in the name of public health.

Today we have very effective antibiotics, better knowledge of the body to offer supportive care, and even knowledge about how the plague is transmitted so we can have more effective public health actions.

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maxlybbert

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otabdeveloper4  2 days ago

> Plague doctors had pleasant-smelling herbs in their masks because that seemed like a reasonable defense against the disease.

The implied condescension hits hard after the Covid masking debacle.

  • shawabawa3  2 days ago

    What debacle? That masks only reduced transmission by about 30% and not 100% and a large statistically illiterate portion of society didn't understand that 30% reduction is better than 0% reduction?

    • AnthonBerg  2 days ago

      The debacle of failing to convey the concrete reality of aerosol transmission and failing to convey the concrete reality of masks that gape at the sides (“surgical masks”) fundamentally and obviously not protecting against aerosol transmission while masks that don’t gape at the sides (N95/FFP2) fundamentally and obviously and provably do protect against aerosol transmission.

      The thing with the masks is exactly the same as if public shopping efficiency authorities had consistently put out the large-scale message that “bags” work to carry groceries but conflating mesh bags with non-perforated bags; Yes, mesh bags do tend to get upwards of 30% of the objects you purchase to your home. There’s an underlying insult to common sense and people are actually not stupid.

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  • muzani  2 days ago

    I guess they linked germs to bad smells (e.g. miasma) and figured out good smells might counter them. It's a pity they hadn't invented essential oils at the time.

  • maxlybbert  1 day ago

    I honestly didn't mean any condescension.

    Years ago, I read a roleplaying book ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orkworld ) that had a throwaway comment that many ancient civilizations had decent medical care for injuries, but good care for disease was much less common. Ancient Romans, Egyptians, Chinese, Mayans, and others mastered various forms of surgery. They even recognized that some materials (such as silver staples) were better for closing wounds because they would be less likely to get infected.

    But disease was always much harder to understand. It's usually hard to tell if somebody got better because of treatment, or because they were just going to get better ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_touch ), and (sadly) if everybody got the same treatment, it wasn't always obvious when the treatment killed people ( https://www.mountvernon.org/library/digitalhistory/digital-e... : George Washington died because he received drastic treatment for a sore throat; including having a doctor remove about half of the blood in his body. People at the time didn't realize that the treatment was the problem, they just believed that sore throats were incredibly dangerous ("George Washington then called for Tobias Lear. Lear recorded that Washington told him, '... I believed from the first that the disorder would prove fatal'")).

    I honestly once thought it would be cool to have a TV series based on the Knights Hospitallers, but realized they’d just be bleeding people in every episode (different time period, same idea: https://smbc-comics.com/comic/chirugeon ). Our understanding of germs is very recent. The 1896 book “The Chemistry of Cookery” ( https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/53458 ) says “I should add that this germ theory of disease is disputed by some who maintain that the source of the diseases attributed to such microbia is chemical poison, the microbia (i.e. little living things) are merely accidental, or creatures fed on the disease-producing poison.” That is, even at the end of the 1800s, whether bacteria caused illness was still disputed.

    During the black death, the people did the best they could with the knowledge they had. But we can do better with the knowledge we have, and that's easy to prove based on comparing modern recovery rates to what they were in Europe in the 1300s. It would be depressing if medical science hadn’t improved in the last 700 years.