Where does the idea of a ‘quarantine’ (lockdown) come from?
In this article, we will describe where does the idea and phrase quarantine (lockdown) come from. To find the origin of the word, we have to look back to mid-14th century Europe.
A common sight in the COVID-19 pandemic.
At the time, bubonic plague, known as the Black Death, was ripping through the continent. Starting in 1343, the disease wiped out an estimated one-third of Europe’s population during the three years between 1347-50. This sweep of the plague resulted in one of the mass mortality events in human history – and it was an impetus to take action.
Officials in the Venetian-controlled port city of Ragusa (now Dubrovnik, Croatia) passed a law establishing ‘trentino’, or a 30-day period of isolation for ships arriving from plague-affected areas. No one from Ragusa was allowed to visit those ships under trentino, and if someone broke the law, they too would be isolated for the mandatory 30 days. The law caught on. Over the next 80 years, Marseilles, Pisa, and various other cities adopted similar measures.
Within a century, cities extended the isolation period from 30 to 40 days, and the term changed from ‘trentino’ to ‘quarantino ‘- the root of the English word quarantine that we use today.
Why was the original quarantine 40 days?
No one knows for certain why the isolation period was extended to 40 days, but scholars have a few hunches. There’s a lot of cultural meaning packed into the number 40 – plenty of Biblical events draw upon the number, such as Jesus’ fast in the desert, Moses’ time on Mount Sinai, and the Christian observation of Lent. Others suggest that perhaps it was simply thinking that 30 days was not quite enough time to burn out the disease.
“It’s arbitrary in a lot of different ways,” says science historian Karl Appuhn. “Why 40 instead of 30 or 50?” The terms of the practice were fickle – in some cases the clock on quarantine would not start until the disease had run its course, so people often were not quarantined for exactly 40 days.
Social class advantages in quarantines
For others, especially those with money, quarantine could be optional. “There are people who are able to evade quarantine, there are people who were able to buy their way out of quarantine, there are people who were able to just leave when a quarantine was imposed and not come back until it was over,” says Appuhn. “So, the people who suffered under quarantine tended for the most part to be poor—people who had no choice.”
Similarly, recent quarantines measures associated with the COVID-19 lockdown have been criticised.
Summary
We have described where does the idea and phrase quarantine (lockdown) come from. We hope you have found it interesting.
