The appearance of new diseases did

The appearance of new diseases did not mean that previously known diseases vanished. On the contrary, some became increasingly important as community health problems at this time. Thus, there is no doubt of the existence of smallpox in the Middle Ages. With the end of the medieval period, however, smallpox seems to have become more widely prevalent in Europe as well as in Asia,Africa, and the Americas, where it was introduced by European explorers and settlers. On the whole, the disease appears to have been mild and infrequently fatal in Europe.Fracastoro, in his book on contagion, treats smallpox rather lightly as a disease to which almost everyone was subject.There are, however, several reports of epidemics in Italy in the sixteenth century, as for instance at Mantua in 1567, and at Brescia in 1570, 1577, and 1588. Ambroise Paré refers to smallpox in France, describing cases he had seen in 1586 as well as at other times.