[Health service organization during the age of pestilence.1]

The author outlines the history of the places where the patients with epidemic pathologies were isolated. Since the study of medicine began, they have been called asclepiei, xenodochi, hospices, lazarettos, sanitary cordons, and quarantine stations and they contribute to controlling epidemics in Europe. These structures, important not only in the situation in which they were created, expressed the medical culture and point of view of that age. Although very far from discovering the cause of the pathology due to their lack of scientific knowledge, the medical class sometimes knew effectively how to organize the isolation of patients. The history of these isolation sites interweaves with the church's life through the ages and with the reality of European states and of the city-states during the Italian renaissance. In classical Greece and in Imperial Rome there were also "homes for the sick" to isolate the patients. Today the world is periodically hit by epidemics. In these moments the medical class uses its research ability and exploits its organizational potential but it also uses historical memory to reduce contagion from the epidemic.