At a lazaretto, plague-infected patients would receive fresh food, clean bedding and other health-promoting treatments, all paid for by the state. It was a way to compassionately care for both new arrivals and local citizens who fell sick with the plague while keeping them isolated from the healthy. The lazaretto served two functions, as a medical treatment center and a quarantine facility. Stevens Crawshaw, who wrote a book about plague hospitals, says that the name lazaretto is a corruption of the word Nazaretto, the nickname for the lagoon island upon which Venice built its first permanent plague hospital, Santa Maria di Nazareth. This new type of state-funded treatment facility would soon become known throughout Europe as a lazaretto.
Ragusa was also the first city to set up a temporary plague hospital on another island called Mljet.
Quarantine wasn’t the only tool in Europe’s ongoing battle with the plague, which would periodically ravage the continent well into the 17th century. Ragusa Also Built the First Plague Hospital The Plague of Florence in the 14th century, as described by Giovanni Boccaccio. PHOTOS: Innovative Ways People Tried to Protect Themselves From the Flu “There are a lot of emotions that need to be acknowledged and preempted and that was part of public health policy 600 years ago as much as it is now.” “There are risks with any sort of epidemic of social breakdown, widespread panic, or complacency, which can be just as dangerous,” says Stevens Crawshaw. As a maritime city that survived on trade, it would have been impossible to completely wall off Ragusa to disease without gutting the economy.īut even if the quarantine measures didn’t fully protect Ragusans from disease, Stevens Crawshaw believes that the laws may have served another purpose-restoring a sense of order. Cities Tried to Halt the Spread of the 1918 Spanish Flu Did the Quarantine Laws Work?Įven with the new quarantine law, Ragusa continued to be hit hard by aftershock outbreaks of the plague in 13. After childbirth, for example, a new mother was expected to rest for 40 days. Stevens Crawshaw says that even before the arrival of the plague, the biblical notion of a 40-day period of purification had crossed over into health practices. When God flooded the Earth, it rained for 40 days and 40 nights, and Jesus fasted in the wilderness for 40 days. Why 40 days? Health officials may have prescribed a 40-day quarantine because the number had great symbolic and religious significance to medieval Christians. The English word “quarantine” is a direct descendent of quarantino, the Italian word for a 40-day period. The 30-day period stipulated in the 1377 quarantine order was known in Italian as a trentino, but Stevens Crawshaw says that doctors and officials also had the authority to impose shorter or longer stays. READ MORE: Pandemics that Changed History New arrivals might not have exhibited symptoms of the plague, but they would be held long enough to determine if they were in fact disease-free. By ordering the isolation of healthy sailors and traders for 30 days, Ragusan officials showed a remarkable understanding of incubation periods. Tomic says that some medical historians consider Ragusa’s quarantine edict one of the highest achievements of medieval medicine. Mrkan was an uninhabited rocky island south of the city and Cavtat was situated at the end of the caravan road used by overland traders en route to Ragusa, writes Zlata Blazina Tomic in Expelling the Plague: The Health Office and the Implementation of Quarantine in Dubrovnik, 1377-1533. The order, which miraculously survived in the Dubrovnik archives, reads that on July 27, 1377, the city’s Major Council passed a law “which stipulates that those who come from plague-infested areas shall not enter or its district unless they spend a month on the islet of Mrkan or in the town of Cavtat, for the purpose of disinfection.” The Adriatic port city of Ragusa (modern-day Dubrovnik) was the first to pass legislation requiring the mandatory quarantine of all incoming ships and trade caravans in order to screen for infection. A 14th-century Italian fresco of the plague, from the Stories of St Nicholas of Tolentino.
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