With the arrival of the Ebola virus on American shores, public conversation has shifted from fears of contagion to a focus on the ethics of quarantine and the rights of the contained. Quarantine is an ancient form of medical precaution, predating immunization by centuries. Its implementation, however, has never been strictly clinical. The question of who is quarantined is often bound up with pre-existing prejudices, and represents a field on which existing concerns over differences of race, religion and geographic origin are played out, confronted, tested and occasionally even rejected.
In 1713, during the last great outbreak of the plague in Europe before its eradication by vaccine, the Jews of Prague found themselves the subjects of such special scrutiny. Prague was a bustling Jewish metropolis; it had more than 11,500 Jewish residents, more than a quarter of the cityâ??s total population. It was also dirty, cramped and crowded â?? walled-in, with only six gates offering access between the Jewish quarter and the rest of the city. When disease appeared, it arrived with special ferocity among the Jews, a ferocity noted by the cityâ??s political and medical authorities alike.
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