Trapped for 40 Days: How Medieval Venice Invented Quarantine

It's the summer of 1468. Marco, a young Venetian sailor, is coming home from Alexandria with a hold full of spices. He can see the bell towers of Venice. But he has a fever, and before the summer is over he will spend forty days on an island, waiting for permission to go home. Those forty days gave the world a word. In this animated documentary we follow Marco and go back to the Black Death. We look at how medieval ports tried to stop a disease they didn't understand, from the siege of Caffa and the plague ships of Messina to Ragusa's thirty-day law of 1377 and Venice's plague islands. And we ask why "quarantine" means forty days. Marco, his sister Lucia and the ship's captain are fictional characters. The history around them is real, and the sources are listed below. ⏱ Chapters 0:00 Venice, 1468 0:49 A word we all know 1:22 The plague arrives by sea 2:17 A disease nobody understood 3:22 Venice watches the water 3:42 Ragusa's thirty days 4:33 The plague island 5:45 The forty days 7:04 The system grows 7:36 Home 📚 Sources and further reading Tognotti, E. (2013). "Lessons from the History of Quarantine, from Plague to Influenza A." Emerging Infectious Diseases 19(2), CDC. https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/19/... Britannica, "When and Where the World's First Quarantine Began." https://www.britannica.com/today-in-h... Blažina Tomić, Z. & Blažina, V., "Dubrovnik, preteča javnih zdravstvenih mjera u Europi." Matica hrvatska. https://www.matica.hr/hr/492/dubrovni... Treccani, Storia di Venezia, "Medicina e sanità." https://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/... Filodiritto (2020), "Peste e lazzaretti: la politica sanitaria della Serenissima," with the Venice State Archives. https://www.filodiritto.com/peste-e-l... SAPIENS (2020), "Venice's quarantine islands." https://www.sapiens.org/archaeology/v... Tran, T.-N.-N. et al. (2011), PLOS ONE: plague burials on the Lazzaretto Vecchio. https://journals.plos.org/plosone/art... Wheelis, M. (2002). "Biological Warfare at the 1346 Siege of Caffa." Emerging Infectious Diseases 8(9). https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/8/9... Report of the Paris Medical Faculty, October 1348 (tr. M. Carlin, UWM). https://sites.uwm.edu/carlin/the-repo... CDC, "History of Quarantine." https://www.cdc.gov/quarantine/histor... Wellcome Collection, "The celebrity physician and the plague" (the beaked mask). https://wellcomecollection.org/storie... #history #animation #quarantine #venice #blackdeath