Première frappée en Europe, l’Italie a dû, la première, trouver les solutions pour faire face à l’épidémie. L’observation des mesures prises, de leur efficacité et des réactions de la population a pu être source d’enseignements pour les pays voisins, et particulièrement pour la France qui suivait l’Italie de sept à douze jours durant la première vague. Exercée à faire face aux catastrophes de la nature – tremblements de terre, éruptions, inondations, etc. –, l’Italie était en revanche moins préparée à une épidémie d’ampleur, rappelant celles qui l’avaient ravagée entre le xiv e et le xviii e  siècle. Face à un même péril, la diversité des réponses et de leur mise en place par les régions, auxquelles la Constitution attribue une compétence forte en santé, est particulièrement instructive pour la santé publique. Et elle fait s’interroger sur la nécessité d’une recentralisation en matière sanitaire dans de telles circonstances. Enfin, l’Italie a appelé à une prise de conscience de l’Union européenne (UE) qui a finalement abouti à des mesures européennes de solidarité. Et, par la question soulevée de l’indépendance stratégique de l’Europe pour la fourniture de médicaments et dispositifs essentiels à la lutte contre la pandémie, l’Italie a contribué à affirmer la nécessité d’une Union européenne de la santé.

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This work is a review of Boris Choubert’s paper (1935), which was published in French under the rather devalorizing title: “Research on the Genesis of Palaeozoic and Precambrian Belts.” Despite its innovative content, this article had no impact either at the time of its publication or even later. It begins with the construction of a remarkable fit of the circum-Atlantic continents. This was based on the −1.000 meters isobath instead of the shoreline. Thirty years before Bullard et al. (1965), it demonstrated in an indisputable way the reality of the continents motion on the surface of the Earth. Therefore, Choubert designated Wegener’s “continental drift” as the main cause of tectonics. Even going beyond Wegener’s theory, he argued that this mechanism was efficient well before the formation of the Triassic Pangæa, during the whole Palaeozoic to result in the building of the Caledonian and Hercynian mountains. Although he was still encumbered by the vocabulary of the time regarding geosynclines, Boris Choubert described tectonics based on the horizontal mobility of the Precambrian continental blocks. Oddly enough, he did not apply this model to the Precambrian structures, which he attributed to the effects of the Earth’s rotation on the continental crust during its solidification. At the time of its publication, this paper was a very important step towards understanding global tectonics. Unfortunately, Choubert’s contemporaries did not generally recognize its significance.

At the beginning of the XXth century, Wegener proposed a theory – that of the roaming drift of the continents – unifying the rival theories of the Europeans and the Americans. As the work of a non-specialist who didn’t trouble himself with specific details, it raised numerous criticisms from specialists in various disciplines though others welcomed and supported it. Some even understood that despite its flaws, it started a new research program. Paradoxically, as regards its simplicity, nonspecialists – engineers, popularizers, secondary school teachers and even believers in para-sciences – gave it a favorable reception. Being amateurs, they continued to endorse it when specialists abandoned it.

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