The Great History of Quarantine

The year 2020 was no a usual year by any means. The pandemic changed the way of life for most people around the world.

It's no surprise that "Coronavirus" was among the top global searches on Google in 2020. The word was searched 60 million times a month in the year. One more word which was equally synonymous with the pandemic was "Quarantine." It features among the Top 10 searched keywords in the United States and has formed part of our daily vocabulary.

When I first heard this word, it brought back memories of my late college days when I watched the television series "Nothing to declare" on the Sky channel. I remember the customs officers confiscating undeclared or prohibited goods that were too dangerous to enter their country.

The word quarantine was often used by them to destroy these disputed goods post confiscation, and that was my understanding of the word "Quarantine." So during the start of the pandemic, when I heard that people were being quarantined due to Covid19, I was in horror. Are they making gas chambers like Hitler to kill affected people? A question that made me look sort of stupid in front of my friends.

Thus began my fact-finding journey to find the origin of this word.

The first use of the concept of quarantine

The origin of the word and the practice of quarantine can be credited to Venice, Italy. It was here that 600 hundred years ago, the practice of quarantine was started.

It was born from the need to protect the Italian mainland and its citizens from the threat of the early waves of the Bubonic plague.

In the 1400s, most of the world trade was through the sea route. This was also the same route for the dreaded disease to enter Venice. Ships coming from the Far East or Africa were a potential bacteriological bomb. Aboard these ships were the black mice infected with parasites and transmitting the disease to the men through the Yersinia Pestis bacterium and causing the plague infection.

To avoid the disease from spreading in the mainland, ships, goods, and their crews arriving from the East were required to be isolated before continuing their journey to the Italian mainland.

Authorities devised an isolation system on two islands in its lagoon which continues to be replicated today. They were called "The Quarantine Islands."

The islands were referred to as "Lazarets," a name derived from the first of such islands, St. Mary of Nazareth.

Just a few miles north-east of the city of Venice, strategically located at the entrance of the lagoon, a second Lazaret was founded by decree in 1648 called the "Lazzaretto Novo" or "new Lazaret."

The sick travelers used to go to the old Lazaret, and the healthy ones were sent to the new Lazaret for sanitary prevention. This was done to segregate the sick from the healthy and to prevent the disease from spreading.

The Venetians were smart enough to understand 600 years ago that isolation and social distancing were the only ways to limit the plague's spread.

There was no medicine or no cure. So the Venetians adopted the best system possible at that time, precautionary isolation.

Accordingly, passengers, cruise, and the cargo loads in the galleys were required to spend about forty days called the invention "quarantena," which translates into exactly forty days. This was the period of time believed to be essential to avoid contagion.

The quarantine period could vary depending on the condition, just as it does today as countries across the globe adopt different time periods of quarantine to prevent the spread of COVID-19.

The quarantine islands were divided into ten isolation wards, with houses once located around its one-kilometer-long perimeter.

A church named after St. Bartholomew, stands in the middle of the four wards to attend Mass while maintaining a safe distance.

Besides the church were two cemeteries, a Christian cemetery called 'Camposanto' (Holy graveyard), and a Muslim cemetery called the 'Graveyard of the Tripolines'.

Today the depot is a museum where Venetian boats and artifacts from Lazaret island and other parts of the lagoon are on display.

The Bubonic Plague kept recurring in Europe for centuries and was one of the world's most feared diseases. In the 17th-century, physicians who tended to plague victims would cover themselves head to toe, similar to the PPE kits we use today, and wore a mask with a long bird-like beak.

The beak was intended to protect the doctors from 'poisoned air' as the bacterium was believed to spread through poisoned air.

Its shape was believed to give enough time for a compound of 'protective' herbs, cinnamon, myrrh, and honey to be suffused before it hit plague doctor's nostrils and lungs."

The look of a fully covered outfit and a bird face mask came to be known as the "plague doctor." It became a staple of Italian Commedia dell art and carnival celebrations and is still a popular costume to date.

So that was the interesting history of quarantine for you.

Years have passed by, but the word keeps getting back as the world keeps facing the spread of this contagious disease every few years.

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