At least 70 were rounded up and quarantined in tents on North Brother Island in the East River. Lice led to typhus, but by the time that disease was discovered, the passengers had spread out to boarding houses and family homes across New York's Lower East Side. Passengers in steerage class had developed such bad cases of body lice that the harbor inspector declared he had "never seen a more bedraggled group," according to medical historian Howard Markel. ![]() In 1892, a boat carrying many Russian Jewish immigrants arrived at Ellis Island. But the disease is spread through mosquitoes, so quarantine was not as effective as the cold snap that eventually killed the infected insects. The best known cure at the time was to "bleed" patients of infected blood and give them wine - and a popular theory on stopping the disease was to quarantine sailors at the Lazaretto, a hospital outside the city. Philadelphia was the capital of the country, but the federal government evacuated rather than face the scourge. Thousands fled for the countryside, and at the height of the epidemic, when nearly 100 people were dying every day, the city government collapsed. As opinions about the disease changed, the isolation period shrank to trentinario - 30 days - but the original name stuck.Īlmost 5,000 people died over the course of two years, about a tenth of the city's population. ![]() This 40-day waiting period became known as quarantinario, from the Italian word for 40. Venice built a hospital/quarantine center on an island off its coast, where sailors from plague-infested ships were sent either to get better, or, more likely, to die. If a ship was suspected of harboring plague, it had to wait 40 days before any passengers or goods could come ashore. So Venice, a major trade port, grew nervous. The so-called Black Death killed 20 million Europeans in the 14th century.
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