The History of Quarantine

Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Triumph of Death, c. 1562

Infectious Diseases

For ages, humanity made provisions to prevent the spread of the disease against possible epidemic risks. Keeping sick people separate to prevent the spread of infectious diseases, is a known long-standing practice. Before talking about quarantine, it is useful to take a look at the first use of the word “isolation”. It has similar meanings to quarantine. One of the earliest usages of the term “isolation” is thought to be in the Biblical book of Leviticus, the third book of Jewish Torah. Although there is no exact information about the date of the book, it is assumed by academics that it was written between 5th and 8th century BC. In the book, the methods for separating infected people with Tzaraath (leprosy) skin disease are described. The bacteria causing the disease were unknown at the time, but the importance of isolation was obvious.

The Plague

By the 14th century, humanity faced the beginning of another epidemic: The biggest plague epidemic in history. Originally appearing in the Far East in the early 14th century, the epidemic shortly spread. From the Silk Road, it spread from Central Asia to the north of the Black Sea. Then, in 1347, the epidemic came to the Genoese colony in Crimea. It reaches Istanbul for the first time, and then Alexandria port by sea. In the same year, Genoese galleys brought the plague to Sicily’s coasts. During 1348, galleys sailing from the port of Kefe arrived in Genoa and Venice. The plague, was spreading rapidly along the Mediterranean coasts through shipping trades, causing damage to all seaports and seaside cities it meets. Cities along the Mediterranean coast are almost infested by rats transported by wooden ships. The disease travels easily by land from here to the rest of Europe.

Italy

Josse Lieferinxe: Saint Sebastian Interceding for the Plague Stricken

The Venetians were the ones who took the first steps to prevent the plague from spreading. The word “quarantine” found meaning in this geography. The origin of the word comes from the Italian word “quarantine”, which means 40 days. The waiting of ships and personnel against the possibility of illness, before being taken to the port, was first applied in Venice. Specifically the Venetian-controlled port of Ragusa (today Dubrovnik), located on the Dalmatian coast. With these isolation practices initiated during the great plague epidemic, the personnel on the ships were kept waiting for 30 days before entering the Ragusa port. Therefore the practice was formerly called “trentina”, that is, a period of thirty days. In the 18th century, the practice began to be called “quarantine”, with the waiting period increased to 40 days. In the first year of the epidemic, health guards begin to label sick houses one by one, and mark them with yellow dyes.

The first quarantine hospital, known as the “lazaretto,” was built on an isolated island of Venice in 1403. People who caught the plague were immediately sent to the quarantine island of Lazzaretto. Ships carrying the disease began to be brought to the port after waiting on the island until the quarantine time expired. Until the 18th century, Europe gradually controlled the spread of plague and other epidemic diseases with quarantine methods. Before that time, a substantial part of the population died. This number was so great that Europe experienced a return to its former population that would last more than 150 years.

America

As the Black Death decreases, other diseases such as tuberculosis, smallpox, cholera, yellow fever continue to be alarming. In the United States, the most known yellow fever in the capital of Philadelphia in August 1793, outbreaks in Georgia (1856) and Florida (1888). State governments often used cordon sanitaire as a geographic quarantine measure to control people entering and leaving affected communities. During the 1918 influenza epidemic, communities initiated quarantine to prevent those infected from introducing the flu into healthy populations. Isolation, surveillance, and the shutdown of classrooms, mosques, museums, and public gatherings are among the containment techniques used by most Western nations.

Ottoman Empire

The Ottoman Empire was still struggling with epidemics during the 19th century. Before the mid-19th century, the plague had destroyed major port cities such as Istanbul and Izmir, killing hundreds of thousands of people. Quarantine was first applied in the Ottoman Empire in the middle of the nineteenth century, much later than in Europe. There were two important steps at the time to prevent the spread of the outbreak: controlling the areas where infections were occurring, and then disinfecting them with different chemicals. While the passengers who completed their quarantine periods were examined in the quarantine centres, an intensive cleaning was carried out by passing their belongings through high-temperature steam.

Covid-19

The world has seen many pandemics so far. For over a year, the world struggles with the Covid-19 pandemic. It is assumed to have emerged in a wild animal market in Wuhan in 2019, and up to the present, millions of people have died. Preventive measures including physical/social distancing, quarantine, and the use of face masks in public settings, have been recommended to minimize transmission risk. Although not like in the past, people are quarantined and the transmission of the disease is attempted to be prevented.

References

Drews, K. (2013). A brief history of quarantine.

Douglas, M. (1999). Leviticus as literature. OUP Oxford.

Sherman, I. W. (2007). Twelve diseases that changed our world. John Wiley & Sons.

https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Quarantine#