What can History tell us about Epidemics?
Can we learn from history about how diseases spread, and how we respond to them?
‘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.
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