March 10th, 2021, 1:30PM / BY Alexandra M. Lord, PhD
A quarantine sign used in Connecticut (NMAH)
As the U.S. comes upon the one-year anniversary of March 11, the date the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a worldwide pandemic, the National Museum of American History shares this piece examining another outbreak from the 20th century.
In 1904 C. A. Lindsley, the secretary of the Connecticut State Board of Health, complained that measles is still prevailing in an epidemic form in too many towns in the state. Measles epidemics could, Lindsley insisted, be arrested if quarantines were simply enforced across the state. Unfortunately, a remarkable and strange misunderstanding of the state’s quarantine regulations had led many health officers to mandate that only the primary or first case of measles in a community be quarantined. As a result, epidemics were spiraling out of control across the state.