Epidemic containment and social control measures in Portugal: the line of lazarettos protecting the land border (1884–1886)

Abstract

Despite the frequent epidemics that affected the Iberian Peninsula, Portugal only set up a system of permanent lazarettos along its border with Spain in the late nineteenth century, during the cholera outbreaks of 1884–1886. Planned and rolled out by army doctors, the system consisted of five primary sites (located at rail crossing points and river boat stations that linked the two sides of the border) and smaller, secondary sites (“vigilance and isolation posts”) at every railway station in the country. This contribution will focus especially on the epidemic containment measures (observation, isolation, and treatment of the infected) implemented in the lazarettos and at the vigilance posts, most of which were refitted and turned into virtual high-security prisons under military guard after the 1884 cholera outbreak. It will also examine the interaction between these preventive measures, which were also aimed at social control and control of unauthorised movement, and the land border cordons sanitaires and the sanitary inspection posts and quarantine complexes that protected the seaports, which functioned as a permanent maritime cordon sanitaire along the Portuguese coast.