Lazaret

Between the 15th and the 19th century, Venice’s reformed its quarantine system on the lazaretto model in view of its unequal successes in dealing with plague epidemics

   At the turn of the 15th century, the medieval practice of quarantine  remained one of the chief means to hold back plague epidemics. It is in this context that Venice saw the construction of the lazaretto vecchio (1423), commissioned by the Senate then funded and operated by the Salt Office, then the lazaretto nuovo (1468). These lazarets would thereafter come under the authority of the Magistrato alla Sanità, set up in 1456 then confirmed in its powers in 1486.

   Before the advent of Venice’s lazarets, plague sufferers were housed in make-shift hospitals or existing sites provisionally requisitioned; the lazaretto vecchio thus becomes the first permanent plague hospital. A lazaret’s main object was, with economic imperatives in mind, to enable the ship population and their merchandise to observe their quarantine before entering Venetian territory thus prefiguring modern lazarets’ modus operandi. Their second role, which would fade away, was to attend to the sick. Venice was thus adopting two ways to curb the propagation of the disease: home quarantine (generally applied to those with limited contact with the disease, more commonly used with women and children) or else confinement, sometimes under duress, to the lazaret. Quarantine terms varied from eight to 40 days and were determined by the conditions under which the person had been in contact with the disease.

   Who is to be found in the lazaret? The poor are over-represented though this should not be assumed to result from prejudices against the disadvantaged – at least in Venice’s case. The precariousness of their living conditions is more to be blamed here. Crowding and poor diet, conditions that most affect the disadvantaged are known to help the disease thrive. This sometimes motivates the removal of whole families to the lazaret where a collective mutual isolation of the sick is not required. In the eyes of the health authorities, this solution is economically preferable to home quarantines, more uncertain and more difficult to enforce.

   During epidemic flare-ups, those with larger houses are allowed to condemn rooms infected by the disease, to move to the countryside or to self-isolate in estates on neighbouring islands. The well-off are thus more frequently allowed to complete their quarantine outside the lazarets. Such factors would have had their part in the lower mortality observed among the wealthy populations. During the 1575-77 epidemic, which did away with one third of Venice’s population, out of the 50721 dead, 329 were nobles. Needless to say, lazarets were not much sought after, least of all by the poor. Their unpopularity sometimes led to temporary closures. In 1633 under popular pressure, Florence closed its lazaret, but the high cost incurred in the care of the sick in urban environment led to its reopening soon after.

   Venice, who spent vast sums in attending to the sick over the 15th and 16th centuries does not achieve convincing results in its attempts at curb the disease. It would ironically reap its first successes in the course of the 17th century, which concurs with a fall in lazaret activity. After the last plague epidemic in Venice in 1630-31, its lazarets revert to their primary purpose, the reception of ships. Closely watched are the vessels hailing from the Levant (near East) or Barbary (north Africa), regions then perceived as plague breeding grounds, whereas ships arriving from European ports are met with a degree of tolerance. Also during the 17th century, the presentation of “patents” becomes compulsory in European and Ottoman ports. The patents indicate the ship’s infection risk and vary according to the health status of the levant harbours where it called. The length of quarantine is fixed accordingly and ranges from 14 to 40 days for the passengers. Between 1716 and 1845, Venice’s lazarets admitted eleven plague ridden ship but the disease never reached the city.

   The relative disappearance of the plague in Europe and in the Levant at the turn of the 19th century reopened the debate around the lazarets’ usefulness as some considered them an impediment to sea trade for cancelling out the benefits of the technical progress bestowed by steam navigation. The emergence of new diseases such as yellow fever, showing up at Livorno and in Southern Spain, then of cholera which spreading after the 1865  Mecca pilgrimage, vouch for the relevance of  the sanitary cordon formed by the lazarets, thus preserved regardless of their rather rare utilisation.

Read more in the dictionnary : Mecca

Read the paper in French : Lazaret