In this episode of Footnotes we're gonna expando on a post (The Origin Of The Word Quarantine, I Bet You Didn't Know No... buzzwords are not the way bees communicate... who told you that? "Quarantine", you may have heard of that, a pretty fun activity for sure, we already know the relation it has with number 40, now we're gonna discover its link with religion and why it really stuck with us like a flea in a black rat's back hehe black death joke ) @erikah made about a pretty trending buzzword
Source: GIPHY
Yeah, yeah, yeah, but why 40? This is a Franz post so the answer is SCIENCE for sure, right? Fuck that, we humans have been isolating people to prevent disease since ancient times, do you really think those guys use science? PLEASE! They used the best thing they had, RELIGION! 40 days are an important and repeating subject in religion, Jesus fasted for 40 days, the Flood lasted for 40 days, the Jewish people wandered the desert for 40 years, 40 is a huge number in religion because it represented a long time, you could say that number forty-fied their believes...
shit even I cringed with that one... lmao!!!
Now, the obviously stuck, the reason? We as humans love tradition and often are ignorant of our own shortcoming... well yes but that's not why it stuck, the true reason is that it worked, that simple, the quarantine of 40 days measure was, for a lack of a better word, officialized during the black death, this disease was caused by the bacteria Yersinia pestis and 40 days was more than enough to counter contagion because it outlasted the period of incubation and transmission of that deadly and awful bacteria
And now we use the word quarantine for not just a period of 40 days but anytime we need to isolate someone or something to prevent spreading, and it all began because some people wanted to make god do the work of science and it worked as always right? dumb fucking luck Salem witch trials??? I don't know what you're talking about nervous laughter you're so silly guys...
Source: GIPHY
Other Sources
Quarantine | Wikipedia
40 (number) | Wikipedia
History of Quarantine | Center for Disease Control and Prevention
Mysteries of vernacular: Quarantine - Jessica Oreck and Rachael Teel | TED-Ed
Where Does The Word 'Quarantine' ACTUALLY Come From? | The Infographics Show
THANKS FOR READING!
Black death and quarantine always makes me think of the village of Eyam.
What happened in Eyam would inspire anyone to make a black metal album
Those people stood bravely in from of one of the most brutal and blackest fates of all, a pandemic in medieval times, that's truly horrifying
Agreed! I did believe the black death had the highest death toll of all pandemics, at least as a percentage of the population at the time. I realise don't remember what the death toll was for Eyam itself, in the end.