BiblioVault - Books about Quarantine

Guarding the Golden Gate

A History of the U.S. Quarantine Station in San Francisco Bay

J. Gordon Frierson, MD

University of Nevada Press, 2022

As a major seaport, San Francisco had for decades struggled to control infectious diseases carried by passengers on ships entering the port. In 1882, a steamer from Hong Kong arrived carrying over 800 Chinese passengers, including one who had smallpox. The steamer was held in quarantine for weeks, during which time more passengers on board the ship contracted the disease. This episode convinced port authorities that better means of quarantining infected ship arrivals were necessary.

Guarding the Golden Gate covers not only the creation and operation of the station, which is integral to San Francisco’s history, but also discusses the challenges of life on Angel Island—a small, exposed, and nearly waterless landmass on the north side of the Bay. The book reveals the steps taken to prevent the spread of diseases not only into the United States but also into other ports visited by ships leaving San Francisco; the political struggles over the establishment of a national quarantine station; and the day-to-day life of the immigrants and staff inhabiting the island. With the advancement of the understanding of infectious diseases and the development of treatments, the quarantine station’s activities declined in the 1930s, and the facility ultimately shuttered its doors in 1949.

While Angel Island is now a California state park, it remains as a testament to an influential period in the nation’s history that offers rich insights into efforts to maintain the public’s safety during health crises.

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Quarantine

John Smolens

Michigan State University Press, 2019

In 1796 a trading ship arrives in the vibrant harbor town of Newburyport, Massachusetts, her crew decimated by a virulent fever. Despite the ship being placed under quarantine, this mysterious disease sweeps through the waterfront, causing entire families to die of plague-like symptoms with alarming haste. The pestilence tests the civility and courage of the seaport residents. Some risk their lives to nurse the sick, while others steal crucial medicine and profit on the black market. Some preach that the afflicted deserve the Lord’s punishment and those who treat the sick are in league with the devil. Dr. Giles Wiggins, a surgeon and veteran of the American Revolution, works tirelessly to save lives, often disagreeing with his medical colleagues on both the cause of the deadly ailment and its remedy. As the epidemic grows, the seaport’s future is threatened by obsession, greed, and fear.

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Quinine and Quarantine

Missouri Medicine through the Years

Loren Humphrey

University of Missouri Press, 2000

Presenting a fascinating overview of medicine in Missouri from the early days of epidemics to present-day technological advances, Quinine and Quarantine approaches the history of medicine as an integral part of the state's development.

Examining the changing environmental risks and diseases that threatened Missouri over the years and the role of the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers as prime routes for the spread of diseases and innovations, Loren Humphrey discusses the efforts of citizens, legislators, and health officials confronting various medical challenges. He offers intriguing medical details of the past two centuries interspersed with the stories of significant historical figures and Missourians' personal accounts. He tells of the pioneers' struggles to use natural remedies acquired from Native Americans, the gory and unsanitary attempts to treat early gunshot wounds, and the common afflictions and diseases such as "swamp fever," measles, mumps, consumption, dysentery, smallpox, and typhoid that seemed beyond medicine's effects. Humphrey also discusses the significance of the discovery and reluctant acceptance of the "antifever" breakthrough now famous as quinine, as well as the lessons learned as a result of Civil War medical techniques.

Quinine and Quarantine takes readers on a remarkable journey that concludes in the present, arguably the most exciting and controversial era for medical advances. Humphrey explores new imaging techniques, laparoscopic surgery, and research on ways to overcome bacterial resistance to antibiotics. He challenges the reader to consider such compelling issues as the escalating cost of health care and the threats posed by environmental hazards. He also identifies topics over which Missourians will likely struggle well into the next century, such as transplants, managed care, abortion, and assisted suicide.

Organized chronologically in fifty-year segments and written in language free of jargon, Quinine and Quarantine offers readers a broad historical view of the medical problems and solutions faced by the people of Missouri, preparing them to cope with medical issues of the new millennium.

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Under Quarantine

Immigrants and Disease at Israel’s Gate

Rhona Seidelman

Rutgers University Press, 2020

Under Quarantine is the riveting story of Shaar Ha’aliya, a central immigrant processing camp opened shortly after Israel became an independent state. This historic gateway for Jewish migration was surrounded by a controversial barbed wire fence. The camp administrators defended this imposing barrier as a necessary quarantine measure - even as detained immigrants regularly defied it by crawling out of the camp and returning at will. Focusing on the conflicts and complications surrounding the medical quarantine, this book brings the history of this place and the remarkable experiences of the immigrants who went through it to life. Evocative and bold, Under Quarantine shows that we cannot fully understand Israel until we understand Shaar Ha’aliya. The gate of arrival for nearly half a million immigrants - a space of homecoming, conflict, exclusion and welcoming - here was the country’s crucible.

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