Knowing what they know of the plague's transmission, the Aromatisse and Spritzee within quarantine borders were the first to begin treatment efforts and the last to start succumbing. Hysteria ran rampant in those days, a more reasonable cause for the reaction than usual as leaders and academics seemingly turned tail and left the nation to die.
The plague doctors, as the people of all walks who took up informal physiology came to be known, were not spared the fear or the infection. Quite a few were greedy, incompetent fools quickly slayed at the hands of either disease or avenging mercenaries; no historian can credibly deny their existence any longer. As corpses piled up and the quarantine's ravages wore on, however, an increasingly desperate populace prioritized. Treatment efforts were focused further, more was discovered on countermeasures, and lives began to be saved.
At the center of this turn in the tide were these doctors, a force that rose up in droves, many of which were later recruited and killed in the useless Red Wars at century's end. Unsung saviors that likely sacrificed everything for their fellows or country, the thousands-odd group and their methods went unwritten and undiscovered until recently. Hearsay and superstition was commonplace, of course, being the primitive age it was - yet the long-lost insights into cellular breakdown, what separates humans from masses and the true nature of "mega evolution" continues to lead the current medical renaissance.