A History Of Quarantines From Bubonic Plague To Typhoid Mary

- 'A History of Quarantines From Bubonic Plague To Typhoid Mary,' NPR, Jan. 26, 2020.

China is building a quarantine center on the outskirts of the city of Wuhan, where a newly identified virus has infected many hundreds of residents.
The idea of putting a possibly sick person in quarantine goes back to the ancient texts. The book of Leviticus tells how to quarantine people with leprosy. Hippocrates covered the issue in a three-volume set on epidemics, though he came from a time in ancient Greece when disease was thought to spread from "miasmas," or foul-smelling gas that came out of the ground.
With this new quarantine effort in the news, we offer a look at quarantine use — and abuse — over the ages.

- Bubonic plague in Venice (1370)

The so-called Black Death killed 20 million Europeans in the 14th century. So Venice, a major trade port, grew nervous. If a ship was suspected of harboring plague, it had to wait 40 days before any passengers or goods could come ashore. Venice built a hospital/quarantine center on an island off its coast, where sailors from plague-infested ships were sent either to get better, or, more likely, to die. This 40-day waiting period became known as quarantinario, from the Italian word for 40. As opinions about the disease changed, the isolation period shrank to trentinario — 30 days — but the original name stuck.

- Yellow fever in Philadelphia (1793)

Almost 5,000 people died over the course of two years, about a tenth of the city's population. Thousands fled for the countryside, and at the height of the epidemic, when nearly 100 people were dying every day, the city government collapsed. Philadelphia was the capital of the country, but the federal government evacuated rather than face the scourge. The best known cure at the time was to "bleed" patients of infected blood and give them wine — and a popular theory on stopping the disease was to quarantine sailors at the Lazaretto, a hospital outside the city. But the disease is spread through mosquitoes, so quarantine was not as effective as the cold snap that eventually killed the infected insects.

- Typhus in New York (1892)

In 1892, a boat carrying many Russian Jewish immigrants arrived at Ellis Island. Passengers in steerage class had developed such bad cases of body lice that the harbor inspector declared he had "never seen a more bedraggled group," according to medical historian Howard Markel. Lice led to typhus, but by the time that disease was discovered, the passengers had spread out to boarding houses and family homes across New York's Lower East Side. At least 70 were rounded up and quarantined in tents on North Brother Island in the East River. An outbreak of cholera followed in New York, from a ship bringing more Russian Jewish immigrants. According to Markel, the front page of The New York Times ran a piece saying, "We don't need this kind of riff-raff on our shores," referring to Russian Jews. It wasn't an op-ed, he notes...

https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2020/01/26/799324436/a-history-of-quarantines-from-bubonic-plague-to-typhoid-mary



- In the 1890s, travelers from Switzerland were quarantined in Italy to make sure they didn't have cholera.
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- Named after the Byzantine emperor Justinian I, Justinian’s plague affected nearly half the population of Europe -

- JUSTINIAN's PLAGUE: During the reign of the emperor Justinian I (527-565 CE), one of the worst outbreaks of the plague took place, claiming the lives of millions of people. The plague arrived in Constantinople in 542 CE, almost a year after the disease first made its appearance in the outer provinces of the empire. The outbreak continued to sweep throughout the Mediterranean world for another 225 years, finally disappearing in 750 CE.

Plague Origination & Transmission: Originating in China and northeast India, the plague (Yersinia pestis) was carried to the Great Lakes region of Africa via overland and sea trade routes. The point of origin for Justinian’s plague was Egypt. The Byzantine historian Procopius of Caesarea (500-565 CE) identified the beginning of the plague in Pelusium on the Nile River’s northern and eastern shores. According to Wendy Orent, author of Plague, the disease spread in two directions: north to Alexandria and east to Palestine.
The means of transmission of the plague was the black rat (Rattus rattus), which traveled on the grain ships and carts sent to Constantinople as tribute...https://www.ancient.eu/article/782/justinians-plague-541-542-ce/



- Justinian I, Byzantine Emperor