2. Black Death—The Invention of Quarantine
A couple suffering from the blisters of the Black Death, the bubonic plague that swept through Europe in the Middle Ages. From the Swiss manuscript the Toggenburg Bible, 1411. VCG Wilson/Corbis/Getty ImagesThe plague never really went away, and when it returned 800 years later, it killed with reckless abandon. The
Black Death[/url], which hit Europe in 1347, claimed an astonishing 200 million lives in just four years.[/font][/size][/font]
As for how to stop the disease, people still had no scientific understanding of contagion, says Mockaitis, but they knew that it had something to do with proximity. That’s why forward-thinking officials in Venetian-controlled port city of Ragusa decided to keep newly arrived sailors in isolation until they could prove they weren’t sick.[/font][/size][/color]
At first, sailors were held on their ships for 30 days, which became known in Venetian law as a trentino[/font][/size]. As time went on, the Venetians increased the forced isolation to 40 days or a quarantino, the origin of the word quarantine and the start of its practice in the Western world.
[/color]“That definitely had an effect,†says Mockaitis.[/size]
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