Quarantine

===Medieval Europe===
The word "quarantine" originates from ''quarantena'', the Venetian language form, meaning "forty days".<ref name="origin"/><ref name="Mayer"/> This is due to the 40-day isolation of ships and people practised as a measure of disease prevention related to the [[Plague (disease)|plague]].<ref name="origin"/> Between 1348 and 1359, the [[Black Death]] wiped out an estimated 30% of Europe's population, and a significant percentage of Asia's population.<ref name="origin"/> Such a disaster led governments to establish measures of [[containment]] to handle recurrent epidemics.<ref name="origin"/> A document from 1377 states that before entering the city-state of [[Republic of Ragusa|Ragusa]] in [[Dalmatia]] (modern [[Dubrovnik]] in Croatia), newcomers had to spend 30 days (a ''trentine'') in a restricted place (originally nearby islands) waiting to see whether the symptoms of Black Death would develop.<ref name="origin">{{cite journal |author= Sehdev, Paul S. |year= 2002 |title= The Origin of Quarantine |journal= Clinical Infectious Diseases |volume= 35 |issue= 9 |pages= 1071–1072 |doi= 10.1086/344062 |pmid= 12398064|doi-access= free }}</ref> In 1448 the [[Venetian Senate]] prolonged the waiting period to 40 days, thus giving birth to the term "quarantine".<ref name="JSM17">The Journal of Sociologic Medicine – Volume 17</ref> The forty-day quarantine proved to be an effective formula for handling outbreaks of the plague. Dubrovnik was the first city in Europe to set up quarantine sites such as the [[Lazzarettos of Dubrovnik]] where arriving ship personnel were held for up to 40 days.<ref>{{cite web |agency=Associated Press |title=Croatia's Dubrovnik, Home to Ancient Quarantine Facilities |url=https://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2020/03/24/world/europe/ap-eu-virus-outbreak-first-quarantine.html |website=The New York Times |access-date=1 April 2020 |date=24 March 2020}}</ref> According to current estimates, the bubonic plague had a 37-day period from infection to death; therefore, the European quarantines would have been highly successful in determining the health of crews from potential trading and supply ships.<ref>Susan Scott and Christopher Duncan, ''Biology of Plagues: Evidence from Historical Populations,'' Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press, 2001</ref>

Other diseases lent themselves to the practice of quarantine before and after the devastation of the plague. Those affected by [[leprosy]] were historically isolated long-term from society, and attempts were made to check the spread of [[syphilis]] in northern Europe after 1492, the advent of [[yellow fever]] in Spain at the beginning of the 19th century, and the arrival of Asiatic [[cholera]] in 1831.{{citation needed|date=March 2023}}

[[Republic of Venice|Venice]] took the lead in measures to check the spread of plague, having appointed three guardians of public health in the first years of the Black Death (1348).<ref>{{cite journal|doi=10.21061/vtuhr.v2i0.16|title=A Brief History of Quarantine|year=2013|last1=Drews|first1=Kelly|journal=The Virginia Tech Undergraduate Historical Review|volume=2|doi-access=free|hdl=10919/90277|hdl-access=free}}</ref> The next record of preventive measures comes from [[Reggio Emilia|Reggio]]/[[Modena]] in 1374. Venice founded the first [[lazaret]] (on a small island adjoining the city) in 1403. In 1467 [[Genoa]] followed the example of Venice, and in 1476 the old leper hospital of [[Marseille]] was converted into a plague hospital. The great lazaret of Marseille, perhaps the most complete of its kind, was founded in 1526 on the island of [[Frioul archipelago|Pomègues]]. The practise at all the Mediterranean lazarets did not differ from the English procedure in the Levantine and North African trade. On the arrival of cholera in 1831 some new lazarets were set up at western ports; notably, a very extensive establishment near [[Bordeaux]]. Afterwards, they were used for other purposes.{{citation needed|date=March 2023}}