suspected were detained. If it appeared in the city itself, the
sick were despatched with their families to what was called the
Old Lazaretto, were there furnished with provisions and medicines,
and when they were cured, were detained, together with all those
who had had intercourse with them, still forty days longer in the
New Lazaretto, situated on another island. All these regulations
were every year improved, and their needful rigour was increased,
so that from the year 1585 onwards, no appeal was allowed from the
sentence of the Council of Health; and the other commercial
nations gradually came to the support of the Venetians, by
adopting corresponding regulations. Bills of health, however,
were not general until the year 1665.

The appointment of a forty days' detention, whence quarantines
derive their name, was not dictated by caprice, but probably had a
medical origin, which is derivable in part from the doctrine of
critical days; for the fortieth day, according to the most ancient
notions, has been always regarded as the last of ardent diseases,
and the limit of separation between these and those which are
chronic. It was the custom to subject lying-in women for forty
days to a more exact superintendence. There was a good deal also
said in medical works of forty-day epochs in the formation of the
foetus, not to mention that the alchemists expected more durable
revolutions in forty days, which period they called the
philosophical month.

This period being generally held to prevail in natural processes,
it appeared reasonable to assume, and legally to establish it, as
that required for the development of latent principles of
contagion, since public regulations cannot dispense with decisions