Epidemics - Writers Forum

Annanan1 · 11-29-2007, 06:50 AM

sorry about spelling Dose anyone know how quickly(or not) a winter epidemic would spreed around a medieval type city and what procautions would be put in place to halt the spreed into other cities.

Banzai · 12-09-2007, 02:47 AM

Medieval epidemics would have been more summer things, since the heat would allow diseases such as plague to spread better. But in the winter, I suppose a flu epidemic would have been possible? Probably spread from person to person, and village to village through markets and travelling merchants.

In terms of how the spread would have been limited, a lot of villages would have closed themselves off- a self-quarantine with no one being allowed in or out. There is a famous village which did this during a plague epidemic, but I can't for the life of me remember what it was called...

Annanan1 · 12-09-2007, 01:13 PM

how quickly would it spread. do you think for example a period of 2 and half months would be suffient for the thing to have appeared and burned itself out again.
Wendy

Olly Buckle · 12-16-2007, 08:49 AM

I would think it would depend on the incubation period of the particular disease. How big a place are you thinking of? 2 months seems unlikely in all but the largest cities, and even then. Think a population for the whole of England of probably about a million, it's only after agricultural reform it starts to grow. Then think about transport on unmade roads with crude horse drawn vehicles and you can see people won't have got about much any time but especially in winter when you would get stuck several times a day. Flu originates amongst domestic animals in Asia and would have got here when plague did at the earliest as it would have to travel the same route, however the thing about cold weather and colds and flu is a canard, someone studied people who were exposed to the same levels of social interaction summer and winter and found the diseases were spread evenly through the year. More colds in winter is because people tend to congregate in small, warm rooms in winter, like getting a cold on an airplane. So you would need a stranger to turn up or someone go visiting to bring the disease into your community. If you are vague about the actual disease you can ascribe it almost any incubation period you wish from three days to three weeks and reckon two generations from the initial infection it will have reached just about everybody in a small, close knit, un-hygenic, medieval community.Quarantine was always tried and never worked, people being what they are.

Annanan1 · 12-17-2007, 07:18 AM

thanks so much that was reallu helpful.

ta