ABSTRACT
In 1348, a “most terrible plague” hit the city of Florence, Italy. In his Decameron (ca. 1351), Italian writer Giovanni Boccaccio (1313–1375) described the disease “as sent from God as a just punishment for our sins.” Death, destruction, and the breakdown of society ensued. Neither cause nor cure was known. Nothing seemed to stop its advance. Boccaccio wrote:
No doctor’s advice, no medicine could overcome or alleviate this disease. An enormous number of ignorant men and women set up as doctors in addition to those who were trained. Either the disease was such that no treatment was possible or the doctors were so ignorant that they did not know what caused it, and consequently could not administer the proper remedy. In any case very few recovered; most people died within about three days of the appearance of the tumours . . . most of them without any fever or other symptoms.
