The Yellow Flag: Quarantine and the British Mediterranean World, 1780-1860

My book is mainly about the first half of the 19th century, but we’re hearing the same debates today that existed then about the ethics of quarantining, about the balance between personal freedom and state responsibility to protect the general population. We’re also seeing significant uncertainty about the disease at hand itself: the lack of agreement over basics like how long this might last, exactly which activities we need to avoid, how long people remain immune after they’ve recovered, how many asymptomatic carriers are there. All of these questions being worked out in real time, and we’re all trying to make our way through contradictory opinions, contested facts, and contrasting models.

Living Through an Epidemic