For hundreds of years before we learned to treat communicable diseases with antibiotics, the most effective treatment was quarantine. Oh, it wasn’t a great treatment for a sick patient, but it helped protect a community from contagion. And you didn’t have to be sick to be quarantined. Travelers often had to sit out some time on an island before their ship was admitted to the mainland in order to catch disease entering a country.
Hakai magazine tell us the stories of five quarantine islands in Italy, Canada, Uruguay, American Samoa, and South Korea; why they came about and what happened to them. -via Digg