Did you know that the Persian scholar of medicine, Ibn Sina (980-1037) suspected that some diseases were spread by microorganisms? To prevent human-to-human contamination, he came up with the method of isolating people for 40 days. He called this method al-Arba'iniya ("The forty"). Traders from Venice heard of his successful method and took this knowledge back to contemporary Italy. They called it "Quarantine" ("The forty" in Italian). This is where the word "Quarantine" comes from. The origin of the methods currently being used in much of the world to fight pandemics...