The latest book by Charles Vidich is based on nearly 20 years of research and is being published at a time when accurate information is most needed on this subject.
Germs at Bay: Politics, Public Health, and American Quarantine will be published on January 31, 2021 by ABC-CLIO.
RELATED QUARANTINE BLOGS BY CHARLES VIDICH
Boston's Quarantine Islands and Their Role in Fighting Epidemics:
Chronologies of events for islands used by Massachusetts governors and Boston's elected officials to quarantine highly communicable diseases.
- Spectacle Island Chronology
- Deer Island Chronology
- Rainsford Island Chronology
- "Life After Quarantine on Rainsford Island" This island served many of the same political and social confinement functions after its role as a quarantine island were terminated.
- Gallop's Island Chronology
POST WORLD WAR I
View of the Quarantine Hospital
Gallop's Island after World War I - Boston's Quarantine Station21st CENTURY
Gallop's Island in 2005 - A "Quarantined" Quarantine Island
No public access was authorized for Boston's historic "Quarantine Island" in 2005. Years of industrial contamination has made it a "No Man's Land."
Epidemic Response Teams
Boston quarantine ship The Vigilant with crew members.
The war on disease has been fought by three key epidemic response groups. These biographical sketches provide a sense of the character of the men who protected our nation from epidemics.
- Boston Port Physicians
- Medical Officers in Charge - Boston Quarantine Station
- Quarantine Island Keepers
The Legal Structure Enabling Quarantine Response Measures
Quarantine practices have relied on federal and state laws to enable the confinement of those sick or those exposed to communicable disease. These authorities are explored in four blog postings covering;
- History of Disease Reporting in Massachusetts
- Federal Quarantine Laws and Executive Orders
- Quarantine Treaties that summarize all of the international sanitary conventions of the twentieth century
- Boston Quarantine
This fourth blog post is a chronology of the 50 most important federal and Massachusetts quarantine laws over the period 1647 to the present, as well as other feature stories related to the Boston's Quarantine Islands posts above.
Case Study of a Small Response
The post 1677 Boston Smallpox Epidemic is a brief analysis of one of the earliest state responses to a quarantinable disease for one of the most consequential epidemics in American history. The blog discusses ancient archival documents that governed the public response to smallpox in Boston during 1677.
Boston Quarantine Orders, 1721-1915
The post Boston Quarantine Orders is complete list of all quarantine orders ever issued in Massachusetts. It is a summary table that shows the date of the quarantine order, the ports affected, the duration of the order, the disease that prompted the order and when the quarantine order was terminated. This is a major piece of research that has never been published elsewhere.