During the Black Plague, did nations ever assist one another with containing & ending the plague, or was it a free-for-all?

by ChickenpoxForDinner
jlsturgeon

If you're referring to the first incident in 1348, no. First, there was nothing like the kind of coordinated "state" power that would permit effective measures to be enforced. Second, nobody knew what exactly caused the Black Death or how to contain it.

The idea of "nations" doing something on that scale is simply anachronistic for the fourteenth century. There were very few strong, unified kingdoms in 1348. Most of Europe was a patchwork of city-states, small kingdoms, and independent or virtually independent duchies and counties. Most polities could barely manage to collect taxes consistently, let along organize an effective quarantine. Some localities, like the city of Pistoia in Italy, tried to put municipal regulations in place, but this was not a coordinated effort and was, furthermore, hampered by lack of medical and scientific knowledge.

The state of medical science in 1348 precluded any large-scale effective response. Theories among the educated about causes of the plague included such possibilities as earthquakes, astrological influence, divine wrath, and deliberate well-poisoning. The mode of transmission via infected fleas was not known, though people did rapidly come to understand that it was probably spread from person to person and through contact with dead bodies.

The most complete record of municipal acts to prevent spread of plague come from Pistoia, and are a great example of how lack of medical knowledge undercut even such local measures. Some of the measures might have been effective, like prohibiting travel to other cities and visiting the homes of deceased by funeral-goers. The numbers of mourners at funerals was also limited. Just as public health workers found during the ebola outbreak, however, many of the public health measures being advised were directly opposed to longstanding custom and we should probably suspect that they were widely disregarded. Furthermore, many of the measures would have had the opposite effect. For instance, it was customary for families of the bereaved to have new clothes made for the funeral, but Pistoian officials prohibited this on account of the expense. Most people in 1348 didn't have many sets of clothes, like sometimes just one. Therefore, requiring them to stay in the same clothes in which they had probably nursed the deceased would have been a terrible idea. Other measures, like requiring inspection of animals to be slaughtered and prohibiting sale of meat from sick animals, were simply pointless from the perspective of preventing the spread of plague. Probably it was a good idea in general not to sell meat from sick animals, but it would have had zero effect on plague.

That said, bubonic plague recurred periodically for the next four centuries, with outbreaks usually about once a generation or two, sometimes more often. As far as I'm aware, though the later centuries are not in my area of expertise, generally careful handling of corpses and some travel restrictions and/or quarantines remained the most widespread measures to try to control it. Anyone who could, simply left cities when plague broke out since the countryside was believed to have more wholesome air.

Source: Rosemary Horrox, ed., The Black Death, 1994