Chronicles of the Virus Day 40. Quarantines Old and New.
It's been forty days. So, when in the Bible we read about forty days and nights in the desert, this is what it feels like. Here, we have a saying, "non te quites o sayo ata o corenta de maio." (Don't take off your undershirt until the fortieth of May.) Actually, the sayo was a long undergarment used before the twentieth century, but always in the winter. There's also forty days between Easter and the Ascension. And forty days between Ash Wednesday and Easter. Rain fell for forty days and forty nights in Noah's time. And the word quarantine comes from the Italian for forty , quaranta . It came about because during plague times, ships were not allowed to disembark people nor cargo during forty days, just in case they were carrying the plague. There's an article from the BBC that describes how Ragusa, along with Venice, were the first cities in Europe to implement quarantines during the Black Death of the fourteenth century. Now, the lazareti , ...