Quarantine

From the fourteenth century....it could have been 'trentine'. Thirty days. The period of time people and ships had to wait at the Venetian ports during that terrible period of time we call 'The Black Death'. It was extended to forty days or quadraginta which led to the word 'quarantine' as we know it today.

Revisiting the past in my head, I find myself deeply saddened at what people had to endure back then. Quarantine was not just a word for them- it was forty days of sitting on a ship with rationed food, isolated, fearful of disease, with no comfort to take their minds of the terrible things going on in the world around them. The plague wiped out millions of people- loss must have been something everyone had to live with.


This word has gravity, a history that can be felt...