Avoid like the plague

Although the Rialto no longer beckons, Philip Howard decides Cumbria is perhaps preferable to the quarantine measures introduced by Henry VIII

I MUST confess that I am feeling very sorry for myself, languishing in Cumbria at this moment. The Media Queen and I had secured this March and April, for the second year, an amazing fifth-floor apartment in Venice. Complete with a grand piano and not one but two rooftop balconies with panoramic views of the city, the idea was to read and write and immerse ourselves in the culture of that amazing city. I am prepared to accept that both

Miss Maya Corona and Mr Ya’akov

Corona have better reasons for self-aggrievement, having pointed out their names no longer have the same exotic ring as before, and that they may wish to change them to a less toxic form of address, like Meghan or Harvey. Poor Ya’akov, a Polish man who settled in Israel, complained that he is now frequently asked if he belches all the time as there is a Jewish superstition that if you belch someone is thinking about you.

But we did not, could not, go. I got windy about getting stuck. Initially I was given a lot of stick for being an over-cautious, unadventurous, risk-adverse old fart. Having said that, I would have felt even sorrier for myself if had we been indefinitely detained in our gilded prison for several months, with TMQ thundering out Beethoven’s Ode to Joy on the Steinway, as several pistol-toting Carabinieri lurked outside wearing face masks. Ironically, Venice first established the earliest formal quarantine law. It required ships to lay at anchor for 40 days before landing – the word quarantine derives from the Latin word for 40. Now that the Italians have decided to lock down everything, the Mayor of Venice should take note of a wonderful quote I discovered from a Dr Anderson, reported in the 1858 issue of Harper’s Weekly: “While the Angel of Death rides on the fumes of the iron scow, and infected airs are wafted to our shore from the anchorage, we shall have no security against these annual visitations of pestilence.” He should apply it to those horrible cruise ships.

Whilst passing the time in splendid isolation I have been reading Robert Hutchinson’s excellent new book on Henry VIII. Apparently, it was the old tyrant who first introduced quarantine laws in England in 1518. The main problem back then was Yersinia pestis, or Black Death to its friends. It first appeared in Europe in 1348 (again in Venice) and killed one-fifth of the population. That was a proper disease. Large, pustular red buboes, vomiting black blood with gangrenous nose, fingers and toes – all within 24 hours. All immortalised in the children’s rhyme Ring-a-ring-a-roses. And the Tudors did not stop at just Black Death. They had smallpox, typhus, malaria and bloody flux. Scurvy tended to afflict wealthy nobs because they didn’t eat any vegetables.

Henry was a serial hypochondriac, constantly obsessing about his own wellbeing. Albeit for good reasons. His early death without an established male heir would plunge the country back into prolonged civil war. Succession overreached everything. But he was surprisingly knowledgeable on matters health. In 1518, he removed the right from the Bishop of London to license doctors and established the Royal College of Physicians to “withstand the attempts of those wicked men who profess medicine more for their avarice than assurance of any good conscience”. In 1523, he extended the college’s jurisdiction to cover the entire country, relegating barbers to teeth pulling. He was not averse to taking the odd hard decision. In 1540, during another bout of plague, he ordered all the sick and ill of Windsor to be dragged out of their homes and carted out of the town’s precincts. They were left in fields or woods to recover or die. This considerably reduced the danger to the court. Mr Cummings, I am sure, will take note.

Reactions to our new designer plague seem to range from total nonchalance to complete hysteria. One of my marginally less bonkers friends suddenly advised me in a low murmur, that this was a Chinese plot. “Biologically engineered, a mixture of SARS, MRS, pig flu, a bit of Ebola and four separate strains of HIV. Their aim is to kill 40% of the population to achieve world dominance,” he whispered, presumably to avoid detection from those listening on his Huawei phone.

The situation feels very like it was during the foot-and-mouth outbreak in 2001, except, of course, that was regional, not global. And it was animals and not people. But the panic and pandemonium and economic devastation caused is similar. I suppose it is because we think of ourselves as such a powerful and dominant species. Almost immortal at times, yet we are all so fragile. We forget we can be wiped out by a little bitty virus. This all looks like a massive overreaction and at some stage normality will resume. Coronavirus will be embedded in our lexicon of diseases. Probably alongside SARS and avian flu, but not as destructive as Bubonic plague, cancer, Hitler, Stalin, Mao or Trump. But that is easy for me to say when I am not old, vulnerable or with compromised health. But if, by chance, I am corona’d before the June issue appears, you may laugh. Anyhow, I am off this wet Tuesday evening to watch Carlisle United versus Newport County. No threat of postponement or coronavirus as the numbers present will not constitute a crowd.

Henry was not averse to taking the odd hard decision. In 1540, he ordered all the sick of Windsor to be carted out of the town’s precincts