Epidemie e contagi nella storia e nel diritto. Spunti e riflessioni a partire dal trattato Del governo della peste di Ludovico Antonio Muratori

Ludovico Antonio Muratori’s Il governo della peste was published in first edition in 1714, when the modern perspective of management and control of contagions by public authority appeared for the first time. Inspired by the idea of “public happiness”, Muratori’s treatise proposes an articulated series of interventions as well as a wide range of prohibitions to be enforced. Along the same line there were Carlantonio Broggia’s Trattato de’ tributi, delle monete e del governo politico della sanità, published in 1743, Angelo Bossi’s volume on yellow fever (1804) and doctor Gaetano Strambio’s book on the “importation of the plague”, where he lashed out against those who denied the scientific truth of the contagion for economic reasons