Quarantine. In the past year everyone has added this word to their vocabulary, but why do we actually use this word? What is the story behind it?

We have to go back to the Late Middle Ages. A time where pandemics and diseases were much more prominent. Many people thought that pandemics were a punishment of God and that disease spread through bad air (miasma). Although local governments didn't really know the causes for disease, they did take measures to protect their citizens as best as they could.

Take Venice for example. As a busy centre of trade, many ships arrived there from all over the Mediterranean daily bringing goods, and diseases. After the big Black Death pandemic in the middle of the 14th century, the city ordered ships arriving to wait 40 days outside the port in isolation to make sure the sailors were not carrying any disease.

In old Venetian 40 is quarantena (quaranta in modern day Italian). Over time the word for forty thus became synonymous for the practice of waiting in isolation to prevent the spread of disease. 

Originally posted on Instagram on March 23, 2021