Encyclopedia: Quarantine
Quarantine is voluntary or compulsory isolation, typically to contain the spread of something considered dangerous, often but not always disease. The word comes from the Italian language Italian quarantena, meaning forty day period. The quarantining of people often raises questions of civil rights, especially in cases of long confinement or segregation from society, such as that of Mary Mallon , a typhoid fever carrier. Quarantine periods can be very short,...