page_title: Quarantine
section_title: Modern history
hierarchical_section_title: Quarantine / History / Modern history
caption_attribution_description: English: Isolating a village whose inhabitants believe that doctors poison those suspected of cholera Русский: Изоляция деревни, жители которой считают, что врачи травят потенциально больных холерой It seems almost superfluous to say that a great war is being wage throughout the world against that dread disease, cholera; and just at the moment it may be noted that the visit of the King and Queen to Malta, while on their way to India, was cancelled owing to an outbreak of cholera there. Perhaps themost remarkable phase of this visitation of the plague comes from Roumania, and affords a parallel to a recent demonstration in Italy, in which ignorant peasantry, believing that the doctors took cholera patients to hospital that they might kill them, forcibly removed "cases" from the authorities and carried the dying shoulder-high throughout the streets to their homes. Our drawing is from a sketch made in Roumania. our correspondent says: "The peasantry, believing that the doctors poison any 'suspects' taken to the hospitals, hide their sick, and in some cases attack and defeat the authorities inspecting. When this action is taken in a village, the Government isolates it by making it the centre of a circle of soldiers. The women of the village show considerable interest in the military."
context_page_description: A quarantine is a restriction on the movement of people and goods which is intended to prevent the spread of disease or pests. It is often used in connection to disease and illness, preventing the movement of those who may have been exposed to a communicable disease, but do not have a confirmed medical diagnosis. It is distinct from medical isolation, in which those confirmed to be infected with a communicable disease are isolated from the healthy population. Quarantine considerations are often one aspect of border control.
  The concept of quarantine has been known since biblical times and is known to have been practiced through history in various places. Notable quarantines in modern history include that of the village of Eyam in 1665 during the bubonic plague outbreak in England; East Samoa during the 1918 flu pandemic; the 1972 Yugoslav smallpox outbreak, and extensive quarantines applied throughout the world during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.
  Ethical and practical considerations need to be considered when applying quarantine to people. Practice differs from country to country.
context_section_description: Epidemics of yellow fever ravaged urban communities in North America throughout the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries, the best-known examples being the 1793 Philadelphia yellow fever epidemic and outbreaks in Georgia (1856) and Florida (1888). Cholera and smallpox epidemics continued throughout the nineteenth century, and plague epidemics affected Honolulu and San Francisco from 1899 until 1901. State governments generally relied on the cordon sanitaire as a geographic quarantine measure to control the movement of people into and out of affected communities. During the  1918 influenza pandemic, some communities instituted protective sequestration (sometimes referred to as "reverse quarantine") to keep the infected from introducing influenza into healthy populations. Most Western countries implemented a range of containment strategies, including isolation, surveillance, and the closure of schools, churches, theatres, and public events. 
  By the middle of the 19th century, the Ottoman Empire had established quarantine stations, including in Anatolia and the Balkans. For example, at the port of Izmir, all ships and their cargo would be inspected and those suspected of carrying the plague would be towed to separate docks and their personnel housed in separate buildings for a determined period of time. In Thessaly, along the Greek-Turkish border, all travelers entering and exiting the Ottoman Empire would be quarantined for 9–15 days. Upon the appearance of the plague, the quarantine stations would be militarised and the Ottoman army would be involved in border control and disease monitoring.
caption: Isolating a village in Romania whose inhabitants believe that doctors poison those suspected of cholera (1911)
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