Late Middle Ages · Europe · Science

1396

Ludovico Trevisan records Dalmatian plague

1396

Ragusa, soon to be Dubrovnik, enforced a quarantine of thirty days, then forty, on incoming ships suspected of carrying disease. The word 'quarantine' derives from quaranta, forty. By the end of the century, coastal Italian and Dalmatian towns had institutionalized public health measures that remained the backbone of epidemic response for centuries.