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In the 17th century, the Medici rulers of Florence sent doctors throughout
their territories, in Europe’s first department of public health, to give
early warning of any outbreak of the plague. Miasmas and Diseases: Public
Health and the Environment in the Pre-Industrial Age (Yale, pp 112, Pounds
Sterling 18.95) is a fascinating little book that summarises their reports
back to Florence.

In it, Carlo Cipolla reveals not only the miseries of life and death in the
squalid hill towns of Renaissance Tuscany, but how a scientific paradigm can
blind the best observer to inconvenient facts. The doctors believed disease
was caused by ‘miasmas’, which arose from bad weather, bad stars, and
especially from bad smells.

The theory was empirically reasonable, given the link between filth and
germs. Reading the reports, it is easy to agree that ‘it was a wonder’ all
the excrement, butchers’ tips and open graves ‘didn’t bring on the plague’.
But the doctors ignored an obvious epidemic of murderous influenza because
it struck whether the air stank or not. If it was not caused by miasmas,
then it was brought on by the patient’s own habits and was not the
responsibility of the civic authorities. Buy this book for your
anti-technology, ‘eco-organic’ friends, preferably before their next
vacation in sunny Italy.