History is riddled with instances of deadly epidemics — which is why health officials have started to look backward to find the right tactics to take with the Swine Flu. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC), for instance, has recruited the help of Dr. Howard Markel, a medical historian and pediatrician at the University of Michigan, reports CNN. Markel has studied the flu epidemic of 1918 to see which nonpharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) work best in such situations.

Markel found that NPIs such as closing down schools, limiting public gatherings and isolating infected patients worked wonders in slowing down the spread of the disease in the 1918 epidemic. Of course, the ideal response to an epidemic is to find a vaccine as quickly as possible — not just slow it down. However, Markel points out that, historically, slowing down an epidemic buys time for health officials to find a vaccine.