QUARANTINE

QUARANTINE
A controversial practice
Quarantine has been practiced ever since the days of the Black Death, and has often been met with resistance and controversy. Through the 19th and early 20th centuries, city dwellers were routinely subjected to quarantines, but in the past 80 years, no large-scale quarantines have been implemented in the U.S.
In 1892, cholera is detected in a number of immigrants. The New York City Port Authority quarantines ships arriving from Europe. Poorer passengers are sequestered below deck on many ships in unsanitary conditions. On one ship, 58 die.
An 1893, smallpox outbreak in Muncie, Ind., turns violent as armed guards try to keep neighborhoods under quarantine. Several health officials are shot.
In 1900, plague breaks out in San Francisco's Chinatown district. Officials impose a quarantine but are charged with ethnic bias after only Chinese homes and businesses are included. A federal court finds the quarantine unconstitutional.
As the AIDS epidemic emerges in the 1980s, health officials try to close down public bathhouses and are charged with discrimination by gay activists. Many states pass laws weakening quarantine powers after some AIDS patients are unnecessarily isolated.
A rise in drug-resistant tuberculosis cases in the 1990s prompts New York to allow involuntary hospitalization. A number of individuals are quarantined. Cases decline by more than 90 percent.