The whole language of antiquity has adapted itself to the notions of the people respecting the contagion of pestilential diseases; and their terms were, beyond comparison, more expressive than those in use among the moderns.
Arrangements for the protection of the healthy against contagious diseases, the necessity of which is shown from these notions, were regarded by the ancients as useful; and by man, whose circumstances permitted it, were carried into effect in their houses.

Even a total separation of the sick from the healthy, that indispensable means of protection against infection by contact, was proposed by physicians of the second century after Christ, in order to check the spreading of leprosy.

But it was decidedly opposed, because, as it was alleged, the healing art ought not to be guilty of such harshness.

This mildness of the ancients, in whose manner of thinking inhumanity was so often and so undisguisedly conspicuous, might excite surprise if it were anything more than apparent.

The true ground of the neglect of public protection against pestilential diseases lay in the general notion and constitution of human society--it lay in the disregard of human life, of which the great nations of antiquity have given proofs in every page of their history.