considerable intercourse with the East was free and unimpeded.
Ships of commercial cities had often brought over the plague:
nay, the former irruption of the "Great Mortality" itself had been
occasioned by navigators. For, as in the latter end of autumn,
1347, four ships full of plague-patients returned from the Levant
to Genoa, the disease spread itself there with astonishing
rapidity. On this account, in the following year, the Genoese
forbade the entrance of suspected ships into their port. These
sailed to Pisa and other cities on the coast, where already nature
had made such mighty preparations for the reception of the Black
Plague, and what we have already described took place in
consequence.

In the year 1485, when, among the cities of northern Italy, Milan
especially felt the scourge of the plague, a special Council of
Health, consisting of three nobles, was established at Venice, who
probably tried everything in their power to prevent the entrance
of this disease, and gradually called into activity all those
regulations which have served in later times as a pattern for the
other southern states of Europe. Their endeavours were, however,
not crowned with complete success; on which account their powers
were increased, in the year 1504, by granting them the right of
life and death over those who violated the regulations. Bills of
health were probably first introduced in the year 1527, during a
fatal plague which visited Italy for five years (1525-30), and
called forth redoubled caution.

The first lazarettos were established upon islands at some
distance from the city, seemingly as early as the year 1485. Here
all strangers coming from places where the existence of plague was