17th Century Jesuit Quarantined In Malta

The word "quarantine" comes from the Latin quaranti giorni, "forty days." Some of the Italian city-states from the late 1340s during the Black Death isolated ships for a limited time period in an attempt to contain the spread of disease. Originally the period was one month, but this was later extended to forty days. This system was eventually adopted by other Europeans.

As scholar M. N. Pearson writes in his book The World Of The Indian Ocean, 1500-1800:

As early as the fourteenth century Italian cities had introduced quarantine to keep out ship-borne bubonic plague from the Middle East. Once the disease appeared, affected areas were cordoned off; in the sixteenth century national policies evolved to achieve this. In 1663 the Jesuit overland traveller, Manuel Godinho, arrived in Malta but was not allowed ashore 'despite our carrying health certificates, for having come from the East, because it is always presumed there is plague there.' He was more lucky in Marseilles: 'The lazaretto, or quarantine, at this port is not as strict as at Lyons and Venice and the health officers discharged me from it in seven days.'

Like Europeans, Indians knew that plague was somehow infectious, although the exact nature of its transmission was not understood in the pre-microscopic era, and that rodents had something to do with its spread.

Link (here)

Photo is of the port entrance into Malta