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The History of Pearls

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<img alt="As this mosaic reveals, pearls have been treasured for countless centuries." class="richtext-image full-width" src="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/media/images/history-pearls-01.width-990_BqxpUEH.jpg"/>
<figcaption>As this mosaic reveals, pearls have been treasured for countless centuries.
 
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<h3>
	Symbols of wealth and power</h3>

	Before the creation of cultured pearls in the early 1900s, natural pearls were so rare and expensive that they were reserved almost exclusively for the noble and very rich. A jewelry item that today's working women might take for granted, a 16-inch strand of perhaps 50 pearls, often costs between $500 and $5,000. At the height of the Roman Empire, when pearl fever reached its peak, the historian Suetonius wrote that the Roman general Vitellius financed an entire military campaign by selling just one of his mother's pearl earrings.

	No one will ever know who were the earliest people to collect and wear pearls. George Frederick Kunz, whom I like to call America's first gemologist, in his 1908 masterpiece, <cite>The Book of the Pearl</cite>, states his belief that an ancient fish-eating tribe, perhaps along the coast of India, initially appreciated the shape and lustre of saltwater pearls, which they discovered while opening oysters for food.
<blockquote>
	Pearls played the pivotal role at the most celebrated banquet in literature.</blockquote>

	No matter the origin, a reverence for pearls spread throughout the world over the ensuing millennia. India's sacred books and epic tales abound with pearl references. One legend has the Hindu god Krishna discovering pearls when he plucks the first one from the sea and presents it to his daughter Pandaïa on her wedding day. China's long recorded history also provides ample evidence of the importance of pearls. In the Shu King, a 23rd-century B.C. book, the scribe sniffs that as tribute, a lesser king sent "strings of pearls not quite round."

	In Egypt, decorative mother-of-pearl was used at least as far back as 4200 B.C., but the use of pearls themselves seems to have been later, perhaps related to the Persian conquest in the fifth century B.C. Rome's pearl craze reached its zenith during the first century B.C. Roman women upholstered couches with pearls and sewed so many into their gowns that they actually walked on their pearl-encrusted hems. Caligula, having made his horse a consul, decorated it with a pearl necklace.

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<img alt="The Romans and Egyptians prized pearls above all other gems." class="richtext-image full-width" src="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/media/images/history-pearls-02.width-990_ZmAjE3T.jpg"/>
<figcaption>The Romans and Egyptians prized pearls above all other gems.
 
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	Pearls, in fact, played the pivotal role at the most celebrated banquet in literature. To convince Rome that Egypt possessed a heritage and wealth that put it above conquest, Cleopatra wagered Marc Antony she could give the most expensive dinner in history. The Roman reclined as the queen sat with an empty plate and a goblet of wine (or vinegar). She crushed one large pearl of a pair of earrings, dissolved it in the liquid, then drank it down. Astonished, Antony declined his dinner—the matching pearl—and admitted she had won. Pliny, the world's first gemologist, writes in his famous <cite>Natural History</cite> that the two pearls were worth an estimated 60 million sesterces, or 1,875,000 ounces of fine silver ($9,375,000 with silver at $5/ounce).

	The Arabs have shown the greatest love for pearls. The depth of their affection for pearls is enshrined in the Koran, especially within its description of Paradise, which says: "The stones are pearls and jacinths; the fruits of the trees are pearls and emeralds; and each person admitted to the delights of the celestial kingdom is provided with a tent of pearls, jacinths, and emeralds; is crowned with pearls of incomparable lustre, and is attended by beautiful maidens resembling hidden pearls."

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<img alt="Over time, a range of pearl styles became available to royalty and commoners alike." class="richtext-image full-width" src="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/media/images/history-pearls-03.width-990_B1tU4Ea.jpg"/>
<figcaption>Over time, a range of pearl styles became available to royalty and commoners alike.
 
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<h3>
	Pearl Harbors</h3>

	During the long history of pearls, the principal oyster beds lay in the Persian Gulf, along the coasts of India and Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), and in the Red Sea. Chinese pearls came mainly from freshwater rivers and ponds, whereas Japanese pearls were found near the coast in salt water. Nearly all the pearls in commerce originated from those few sources. Over the next millennium only three substantive events altered what appeared to be a very stable pattern. Considering the minimal state of pearling in the United States today, it is impressive that two of the three developments occurred in the New World.

	As Europe raced to capitalize on what Columbus had stumbled upon, the major powers of the day concentrated on spheres of influence. Spain focused its efforts in Central and South America and the Caribbean. Along both the Atlantic and Pacific coasts of Central America, the Spanish forced slaves to dive for pearls. The English colonizers along North America's Atlantic coast and French explorers to the north and west, all found native Americans wearing pearls, and they discovered freshwater pearls in the Ohio, Mississippi, and Tennessee River basins. So many gems were exported to Europe that the New World quickly gained the appellation "Land of Pearls."
<blockquote>
	Kokichi Mikimoto, the son of a noodle maker, had a dream and a hard-working wife, Ume.</blockquote>

	What is now the United States became famous for two products. Its best freshwater pearls fueled a ready market overseas, purchased by people who, unlike the then less sophisticated frontier Americans, knew the rarity and value of large, round, lustrous pearls. Many of the best examples made their way into Europe's royal gem collections, where they can still be seen on display, usually misidentified as saltwater pearls from the Orient. America also produced mother-of-pearl buttons, which it exported all over the world. Iowa became the center of the trade, shipping billions of iridescent fasteners until World War II, when newly invented plastic virtually drove quality buttons out of the market.

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<img alt="Mother of Pearl" class="richtext-image full-width" src="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/media/images/history-pearls-04.width-990_cX0VPGm.jpg"/>
<figcaption>Mother-of-pearl, the iridescent coating inside oyster shells, once formed the foundation of a thriving button industry in the U.S.
 
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	While North America set a new standard for large freshwater pearls, white saltwater pearls from the coasts of Panama and Venezuela competed with pearls from Bahrain, and black saltwater pearls from the Bay of California (in what is now Mexico) provided an alternative to Tahitian blacks. More pearls arrived in Spain than the country's aristocratic market could absorb. As with the emeralds it was mining in Colombia, Spain found ready buyers for its new pearls across Europe and in India.

	Those pearl supplies continued into the 1800s, until overfishing in Central American waters and in North American streams depleted the beds. Pollution also took its toll as the United States industrialized. Then, toward the end of the last century, the single event that forever reshaped the pearl trade slowly unfolded in the isolated island nation of Japan.

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<img alt="Kokichi Mikimoto" class="richtext-image full-width" src="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/media/images/history-pearls-05.width-990_2fO6t5g.jpg"/>
<figcaption>Son of a Japanese noodle maker, Kokichi Mikimoto single-handedly launched the cultured-pearl industry.
 
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<h3>
	A Culture is Born</h3>

	Kokichi Mikimoto, the son of a noodle maker, had a dream and a hard-working wife, Ume. Together they set about to do what no one else had done—entice oysters to produce round pearls on demand. Mikimoto did not know that government biologist Tokichi Nishikawa and carpenter Tatsuhei Mise had each independently discovered the secret of pearl culturing—inserting a piece of oyster epithelial membrane (the lip of mantle tissue) with a nucleus of shell or metal into an oyster's body or mantle causes the tissue to form a pearl sack. That sack then secretes nacre to coat the nucleus, thus creating a pearl.

	Mise received a 1907 patent for his grafting needle. When Nishikawa applied for a patent for nucleating, he realized that he and Mise had discovered the same thing. In a compromise, the pair signed an agreement uniting their common discovery as the Mise-Nishikawa method, which remains the heart of pearl culturing. Mikimoto had received an 1896 patent for producing hemispherical pearls, or mabes, and a 1908 patent for culturing in mantle tissue. But he could not use the Mise-Nishikawa method without invalidating his own patents. So he altered the patent application to cover a technique to make round pearls in mantle tissue, which was granted in 1916. With this technicality, Mikimoto began an unprecedented expansion, buying rights to the Mise-Niskikawa method and eclipsing those originators of cultured pearls, leaving their names only for history books.

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<img alt="" class="richtext-image full-width" src="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/media/images/history-pearls-06.width-990_kYIiJa8.jpg"/>
<figcaption>Mikimoto's efforts made pearls in a range of styles and prices available to consumers worldwide.
 
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	Largely by trial and error over a number of years, Mikimoto did contribute one crucial discovery. Whereas Nishikawa nucleated with silver and gold beads, Mikimoto experimented with everything from glass to lead to clay to wood. He found he had the highest success rates when he inserted round nuclei cut from U.S. mussel shells. Although some countries continue to test other nuclei, U.S. mussel shells have been the basis for virtually all cultured saltwater pearls for 90 years.

	Even though third with his patents and his secrets, Mikimoto revolutionized pearling. Ever the flamboyant showman and promoter, he badgered jewelers and governments to accept his cultured products as pearls. His workers created massive pearl structures, which he displayed at every major international exposition. By mastering the techniques, Mikimoto, then hundreds of other Japanese firms, made pearls available to virtually everyone in the world.

While pearls are now available to the masses, these gems were once the most expensive jewelry in the world.

Buried History: First Baptist Church

For centuries, the roles that African Americans played in shaping the U.S. have been buried. When it comes to telling the full history of our country, their significance is often dismissed.
In historic Williamsburg, Virginia, with the dramatic discovery of the First Baptist Church’s foundation and evidence of a burial site, archaeologists are unearthing an untold story.This video was produced in collaboration with NOVA and is made possible in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a private corporation funded by the American people.
Buried History: First Baptist ChurchPublished: August 18, 2021Narrator: A recent discovery in Colonial Williamsburg uncovered the foundations of one of the country&#x27;s oldest African American churches. Founded in 1776 by free and enslaved Blacks, First Baptist Church once stood on this lot on Nassau Street. In addition to a structure built in 1856, they found a smaller, much older brick foundation, as well as intact postholes from what appears to be the late 1700s. Excavating further revealed a grave site that could hold the keys to America&#x27;s very beginnings.Connie Matthews Harshaw: We started looking for artifacts, had no idea that there were intact burials there.Dr. Joseph Jones: We can go back and study bone fragments, and it&#x27;s going to tell you what was going on during the lifetime of the person. We know from historical research, including people&#x27;s own genealogical stories. And then together, of course, those become a collectiveNarrator: For decades, the church&#x27;s rich beginnings were hidden by asphalt to provide parking for tourists, but are now being uncovered by archaeologists and devices, like ground-penetrating radar.Eric Schweickart: The radar typically sees down about maybe a meter, a meter and a half. We&#x27;ve got a series of things reflecting back up at us, and those reflections we know are, start about right here and then continue to about right here, so it&#x27;s about here in space, which is right about where the wall is.Narrator: Technology has aided in finding two brick foundations, the first belonging to a small wood-frame church believed to have been built in the early 1700s. Historic accounts say that structure was destroyed by a tornado in 1834. On top of that foundation, a larger one that matches the brick building built in 1856. The second church stood near the corner of Nassau and Francis Streets for 100 years before it was torn down and paved over in 1957. While radar detects what&#x27;s beneath the surface, it takes the skillful hands of this archaeological team to dig it out.Deshondra Dandridge: I&#x27;ve uncovered a multitude of different types of artifacts. One that I think was pretty interesting, it&#x27;s called a fish scale, also known as a trim. So basically it&#x27;s a 3-cent silver coin that we actually excavated out here. For me personally, it&#x27;s been a very humbling experience just to be a part of something that&#x27;s gonna tell a bigger history here at Colonial Williamsburg.Narrator: Part of that bigger story lies just a few yards away, where archaeologists discovered more than a dozen graves.Meredith Poole: What you see in the ground in the bottom of these trenches, these sort of orange soil discolorations here, are places where people have dug so deep into the ground in order, in this case, to put a coffin or a burial, that they have pulled up all sorts of deep orange subsoil clay. So, I see one that comes out here, and turns a corner and runs back this direction, and then into the wall. We&#x27;d love to know whether the graves line up with the first church or whether they are associated with the second church.Narrator: While archaeologists in the field study the deeper orange-colored soil to determine the number of graves below, experts at the lab work to identify some 250 bone fragments uncovered during the excavation, four of which were human teeth.Jones: You know, there are overarching questions challenging some of what we, you know, think we know. The teeth, for example, that would tell us something about the age of the individual. We can look at markers or lines in the teeth, which we call hypoplasias. These are stress lines from any type of nutritious and/or disease stress. We can read the outsides of the skeletons for signs of infection and things of that nature. Even doing a chemistry or DNA analysis, if there&#x27;s enough protein present, you put together a really complete individualized life histories. The biology becomes another unique window onto the social experiences.Harshaw: 1858. This is amazing. This is the record, your family&#x27;s record of marriages.Reverend Julie G. Grace: Marriages and deaths, yes.Harshaw: Wow.Narrator: The members of First Baptist are eager to learn if any of their ancestors are buried there, and are ready to submit DNA samples to find out.Harshaw: To stand in that space and to realize that for so many years, that asphalt covered what should have been a burial ground, and so that&#x27;s been the most surprising part for me.Narrator: Founded in secret by free and enslaved Blacks in 1776, the congregation would meet in the brush arbors of the Green Springs Plantation.James Ingram: We&#x27;re not called by King George, we&#x27;re not called by the Bishop of Canterbury. We are called by God.Narrator: Displaced by the Revolutionary War, the congregation would move once more before the 600 members would settle at this location on Nassau Street. Reverend Julie Grace is among those whose family ties are deeply woven in the church&#x27;s archival fibers. She was christened in the larger brick church just eight years before it was torn down in 1957.Grace: You know that I&#x27;m the baby in the old church. On this picture, you&#x27;ll see me in the arms of my godfather Hulon Willis, who was the first African American admitted to William and Mary. I am so excited to go out and be on the grounds, and actually be there where your ancestors were and where they worshiped, and also to know that this was a brick church built by Black people. You know, it&#x27;s, I get emotional when I think about it.Narrator: With the help of modern science, local descendants are unearthing stories of the rich history woven in the fabric of this country&#x27;s foundation.Harshaw: We&#x27;re hoping that this story will lead the nation to do the right thing, to look around the country, and to do what we call historic justice. And that is happening in so many places because the intentional coverup of the African American story, as well as other groups. You can&#x27;t just tell history from one perspective. We were all here, and we all contributed, and the story needs to be told.

For centuries, the roles that African Americans played in shaping the U.S. have been buried. When it comes to telling the full history of our country, their significance is often dismissed.

The History of Money

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<img alt="Different forms of currency through time" class="richtext-image full-width" src="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/media/images/history-money-01.width-990_zHK1AXA.jpg"/>
<figcaption>Today we value gold Kruggerands and paper Franklins, but cattle and cowrie shells have also served as currency.
 
 <div class="credit">© Steve Sucsy (coin), Skip O'Donnell (bills), narvikk (cow), Steve Goodwin (shells)/iStock</div>
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	Editor's Note: The dates below mark the approximate start of use.
<h3>
	In the Beginning: Barter</h3>

	Barter is the exchange of resources or services for mutual advantage, and the practice likely dates back tens of thousands of years, perhaps even to the dawn of modern humans. Some would even argue that it's not purely a human activity; plants and animals have been bartering—in symbiotic relationships—for millions of years. In any case, barter among humans certainly pre-dates the use of money. Today individuals, organizations, and governments still use, and often prefer, barter as a form of exchange of goods and services.
<h3>
	9000 - 6000 B.C.: Cattle</h3>

	Cattle, which throughout history and across the globe have included not only cows but also sheep, camels, and other livestock, are the first and oldest form of money. With the advent of agriculture also came the use of grain and other vegetable or plant products as a standard form of barter in many cultures.
<h3>
	1200 B.C.: Cowrie Shells</h3>

	The first use of cowries, the shells of a mollusc that was widely available in the shallow waters of the Pacific and Indian Oceans, was in China. Historically, many societies have used cowries as money, and even as recently as the middle of this century, cowries have been used in some parts of Africa. The cowrie is the most widely and longest used currency in history.
<h3>
	1000 B.C.: First Metal Money and Coins</h3>

	Bronze and Copper cowrie imitations were manufactured by China at the end of the Stone Age and could be considered some of the earliest forms of metal coins. Metal tool money, such as knife and spade monies, was also first used in China. These early metal monies developed into primitive versions of round coins. Chinese coins were made out of base metals, often containing holes so they could be put together like a chain.
<h3>
	500 B.C.: Modern Coinage</h3>

	Outside of China, the first coins developed out of lumps of silver. They soon took the familar round form of today, and were stamped with various gods and emperors to mark their authenticity. These early coins first appeared in Lydia, which is part of present-day Turkey, but the techniques were quickly copied and further refined by the Greek, Persian, Macedonian, and later the Roman empires. Unlike Chinese coins which depended on base metals, these new coins were made from precious metals such as silver, bronze, and gold, which had more inherent value.
<h3>
	118 B.C.: Leather Money</h3>

	Leather money was used in China in the form of one-foot-square pieces of white deerskin with colorful borders. This could be considered the first documented type of banknote.
<h3>
	A.D. 800 - 900: The Nose</h3>

	The phrase "To pay through the nose" comes from Danes in Ireland, who slit the noses of those who were remiss in paying the Danish poll tax.
<h3>
	806: Paper Currency</h3>

	The first known paper banknotes appeared in China. In all, China experienced over 500 years of early paper money, spanning from the ninth through the fifteenth century. Over this period, paper notes grew in production to the point that their value rapidly depreciated and inflation soared. Then beginning in 1455, the use of paper money in China disappeared for several hundred years. This was still many years before paper currency would reappear in Europe, and three centuries before it was considered common.
<h3>
	1500: Potlach</h3>

	"Potlach" comes from a Chinook Indian custom that existed in many North American Indian cultures. It is a ceremony where not only were gifts exchanged, but dances, feasts, and other public rituals were performed. In some instances potlach was a form of initiation into secret tribal societies. Because the exchange of gifts was so important in establishing a leader's social rank, potlach often spiralled out of control as the gifts became progressively more lavish and tribes put on larger and grander feasts and celebrations in an attempt to out-do each other.
<h3>
	1535: Wampum</h3>

	The earliest known use of wampum, which are strings of beads made from clam shells, was by North American Indians in 1535. Most likely, this monetary medium existed well before this date. The Indian word "wampum" means white, which was the color of the beads.
<h3>
	1816: The Gold Standard</h3>

	Gold was officially made the standard of value in England in 1816. At this time, guidelines were made to allow for a non-inflationary production of standard banknotes which represented a certain amount of gold. Banknotes had been used in England and Europe for several hundred years before this time, but their worth had never been tied directly to gold. In the United States, the Gold Standard Act was officialy enacted in 1900, which helped lead to the establishment of a central bank.
<h3>
	1930: End of the Gold Standard</h3>

	The massive Depression of the 1930s, felt worldwide, marked the beginning of the end of the gold standard. In the United States, the gold standard was revised and the price of gold was devalued. This was the first step in ending the relationship altogether. The British and international gold standards soon ended as well, and the complexities of international monetary regulation began.
<h3>
	The Present:</h3>

	Today, currency continues to change and develop, as evidenced by the new $100 U.S. Ben Franklin bill.
<h3>
	The Future: Electronic Money</h3>

	In our digital age, economic transactions regularly take place electronically, without the exchange of any physical currency. Digital cash in the form of bits and bytes will most likely continue to be the currency of the future.

From barter, cattle, and cowrie shells to modern coins and currency, see how economic exchange has evolved through time.

(photos) See credits for each below; (mosaic) © WGBH Educational Foundation

Materials that changed history

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Where would we be without wood, ceramics, glass, iron? Human civilization would not have advanced as it has without these and other key materials. Here, look at 10 resources that have had the most significant impact on society, ranging from the most ancient kinds to those remaking the 21st century.<h3>Wood</h3>Before stone there was wood. We humans are, after all, products of the forests. No material has followed the history of our species, from millions of years ago in the heart of Africa to the present, more intimately and persistently than wood has. This simple fact is often lost in the archeologist's understandable passion for more durable substances like stone and brick, but our material world was once almost exclusively one of logs, sticks, bark, twigs, bamboo, and the myriad other forms that wood takes in nature.No material is so impressive in its versatility. This follows from nature's own design, endowing woody plants with a great range of strengths, densities, and flexibility. This, in turn, is largely due to the composite structure of the material—generally combinations of strong fibers and tough binders. The result may be dense and heavy, like oak or hornbeam, or soft and light, like balsa. It may be extremely flexible, like willow or laurel, or tough and resistant to change, like teak or mahogany.Mastery of wood allowed humans to transform rivers and seas from barriers to highways; to build fences, homes, and walls, even when little stone was available; and to furnish their lives with everything from beds and chairs to buckets and barrels. In the last century or so, this mastery—and the dependency that followed—has extended to entirely new forms, including slices, laminates, particles, and chips.<h3>Ceramics</h3>In the 21st century, we tend not to think much about pots—or any of a host of things made from fired clay. But to archeologists, the existence or absence of ceramics is one of the most fundamental indicators of a society's stage of development. An "aceramic" society has few ways of storing food or water, and thus its agriculture remains limited and primitive until it learns how to fire clay.Clay can be shaped and then hardened by drying, but only when it is baked to a sufficiently high temperature does its chemistry and structure permanently change to make it impervious to liquids and allow it to retain its shape over a range of conditions. The earliest of the great civilizations—in Mesopotamia (modern Iraq), China, and India—thrived on creating not only practical containers but also colorful tiles, statues, and jewelry. Combining clays with other minerals and then firing the mixture resulted in brilliant colors—the first glazes.Ironically, for this most ancient of manufactured materials, some of the most advanced substances to come from 21st-century laboratories, such as high-temperature superconductors, are ceramics.<h3>Fiber &amp; cloth</h3>So ubiquitous is cloth that we hardly even think of it as a material, but it is arguably the first complex manufacture that humans mastered. While a limited number of "fibers" exist in nature, there is no cloth. And the fibers that do exist—silk, cotton, or wool, for example—have to be transformed before they can be made into cloth. How humans learned to take the hair of a sheep or goat and twist hundreds or thousands of individual hairs together to make woolen thread or yarn, or how they learned to soak the straw of the flax plant to separate fibers that they could then spin into linen, is one of the great mysteries of our early history.One of the qualities of cloth that has appealed so strongly through the ages is its great variety. The Chinese discovered perhaps as much as 5,000 years ago that they could use the fine exudations of the silkworm larva to make a sheer and exquisite cloth. About the same time, cloth makers in India and Egypt were spinning the fibers of the cotton plant into a remarkably versatile fabric, one that they could weave into a range of weights and textures. Throughout much of the world, our forebears found that they could work the hair from a variety of herded animals, from camels to sheep, into some of the softest fabrics known or the scratchiest materials ever to rub human skin.Today it is a rare wardrobe that does not feature some cloth whose history began in a test tube rather than on a farm.The versatility and variety of cloth has not diminished with the application of modern chemistry to its improvement. While some of the earlier efforts at fashioning clothing from synthetic materials such as rayon or polyester became the butt of jokes, today it is a rare wardrobe that does not feature some cloth whose history began in a test tube rather than on a farm.<h3>Bronze</h3>The first metal that humans were able to make serious use of was copper. But this metal, occasionally found as nuggets though more commonly reduced from ores, is fairly soft and will not hold an edge. Bronze, an alloy of copper with small amounts of tin, is a much more useful form. We do not know how craftsmen came up with this combination, but thousands of years of working with copper preceded the discovery of bronze some 5,000 to 6,000 years ago (in a number of places).As the first intentionally produced alloy, bronze set the precedent for the widespread use of metals, notably for weapons. The first swords had bronze blades, and the material's ability to hold a sharp edge while resisting chipping or breaking was perhaps its most valued attribute.Because the constituents of bronze, particularly tin, are not especially common, they were probably the first products of long-distance trade. Even before classical times, the Mediterranean region saw extensive trade of copper from Cyprus (whose name comes from the Greek word for the metal) and tin from sources as far away as southwest England (Cornwall).<h3>Iron &amp; steel</h3>Even in the 21st century, no more important metal exists than iron, and this has been true for as much as 3,000 years. Workable ores of iron occur in almost every part of the world, and a variety of techniques can produce forms of the metal with a great range of properties. Historically, there have been three basic forms of iron: wrought iron, cast iron, and steel. Craftsmen relying entirely on experience and observation discovered each of these forms and used them for centuries. It was not until the 19th century that the constituent differences among them were understood, particularly the role of carbon.Wrought iron is almost pure iron, a metal that can be readily worked in a forge and that is tough and yet ductile, meaning it can be hammered into shape. Cast iron, on the other hand, has a marked amount of carbon, perhaps as much as five percent, mixed in with the metal (in both chemical and physical combination). This constitutes a product that, unlike wrought iron, can be melted in charcoal furnaces and thus poured and cast in molds. It is very hard but also brittle. Historically, cast iron was the product of blast furnaces, first used by Chinese metalsmiths perhaps as early as 2,500 years ago.For the last century and half, the most important form of iron has been steel. Steel is actually a great range of materials, whose properties depend both on the amount of carbon contained—typically between 0.5 and 2 percent—and on other alloying materials. Generally, steel combines the toughness of wrought iron with the hardness of cast iron, hence historically it has been valued for such uses as blades and springs. Before the middle of the 19th century, achieving this balance of properties required craftsmanship of a high order, but the discovery of new tools and techniques, such as open-hearth smelting and the Bessemer process (the first inexpensive industrial process for mass-producing steel from iron), made steel cheap and plentiful, displacing its rivals for almost all uses.<h3>Glass</h3>The first glass was probably made by accident, as sand found its way into a kiln and then fused. This resulted in a material resembling a ceramic in cold brittleness but actually very different in structure and properties. While we think of glass as normally clear, it took centuries of experience and experiment to produce a reasonably clear glass, probably not until Roman times.Glass is made by heating sand (silicon oxide) with a "flux," which is a mineral (such as sodium carbonate) that will lower the melting point of the mixture. The color or clearness of the glass depends on the purity of the ingredients and the particular combination of sand and flux. The result is a transparent or translucent material that is quite brittle but is nonetheless physically a liquid rather than a solid. That is, glass has no crystalline structure and actually "flows," albeit typically very slowly.Cables of glass fiber now constitute the backbone of our Information Age.The first glassmakers who could turn out truly clear glass consistently and reliably were the Venetians, whose "cristallo" set the standard for fine glass in the late Middle Ages. Glass was much too expensive for common use in windows until about the 17th century, and true widespread application had to wait until industrial-scale manufacture in the 19th century. The material's versatility has continued to flower up to our own day, when cables of glass fiber now constitute the backbone of our Information Age.<h3>Paper</h3>Humans set down their language in writing for thousands of years before they had paper—writing can be put onto stone, clay, wood, cloth, skin, and other surfaces. But despite the diversity of alternatives, and the emergence of electronic media, a world without paper would be very different from the one we know.Paper is one of a number of inventions that came out of an astonishingly creative period in China about 2,000 years ago. When fibers—either directly from a plant or, more typically, from discarded cloth—are permitted to soak and partially rot, they can be reconstituted into randomly entangled sheets. By carefully pressing these sheets until dry and then, usually, "sizing" them with a starch (to seal gaps among the fibers), an exceptionally versatile material can result. The variety of forms the final paper can take ranges from the fineness and flimsiness of tissue to the toughness of kraft and other wrapping papers or the "washi" paper the Japanese use for lanterns, screens, and even walls.
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<h3>Plastics &amp; rubber</h3>For thousands of years, our ancestors appreciated a small number of materials distinguished by their smooth and often colorful appearance: Ivory, tortoiseshell, and horn could be turned into small luxury items that bore a warmth and elegance hard to achieve in other substances. In the 1800s, the growth of markets, combined with a greatly enlarged understanding of chemistry, gave rise to a whole new class of artificial substances that made it possible to turn out such items in great quantities at low cost. The first commercial plastic was celluloid, made from nitrated cotton and camphor. When this combination was heated under pressure, it was transformed into an astonishingly versatile substance that could be made into everything from combs and collars to dolls, playing cards, and, eventually, ping pong balls.In the 20th century, this first plastic was joined by a host of substances that were even more, well, plastic. The new plastics, by then typically made from by-products of coal or petroleum production, were sometimes fashioned into more ersatz luxury items. But their properties also lent themselves to a host of technical uses, from telephones and other electrical devices to substitute body parts and other medical devices that would be all but unthinkable made out of any other substance.Closely related to these plastics was rubber, which started out as a natural product brought to Europe by early explorers of South America. Natives used the milky sap of Hevea brasiliensis for waterproofing and making bouncing balls. The Europeans adapted lumps of dried sap to rub out pencil marks (hence the name "rubber"). It was not until about 1840 that Charles Goodyear discovered how to make the material into a range of stable forms, good for everything from combs to inflatable rafts. The rubber pneumatic tire proved indispensable for motor transport in the 20th century, and this dependence led to the invention of synthetic rubber, much in the same fashion as the plastics.<h3>Aluminum</h3>For millennia, the range of metals available for making things comprised a limited set of elements. Apart from precious metals used for money and jewelry, the practical metals were exclusively forms or alloys of lead, copper, or iron. This changed in the late 19th century, most spectacularly with the introduction of aluminum. This was a metal that was not even suspected to exist until about 200 years ago, when chemists began to use new tools to explore the composition of common minerals.One of the minerals they investigated was alum, which people had relied on since ancient times as an astringent and in making dyes more stable. This material appeared to have an unknown metallic origin, but the metal was not separated out until the 1820s and not purified until the 1850s. Even then, it was very expensive and difficult to make. The wonderful properties of aluminum—especially its remarkable light weight and its silvery luster—attracted wide attention. Precious jewelry and exotic objects such as opera glasses were fabricated from it. It was even seen fitting to make the small apex of the Washington Monument, completed in 1884, out of pure aluminum.The coming of aviation in the early 1900s gave aluminum new strategic value.The status of aluminum changed dramatically in the 1880s, when two young chemists, one in France and the other in the United States, discovered how to make pure aluminum metal using strong electric currents. This "electrolytic process" made the metal readily available, depending only on the availability of cheap electricity. The coming of aviation in the early 1900s gave aluminum new strategic value, and expanded production to meet wartime demand led to the metal becoming one of the most ubiquitous of the 20th century.<h3>Semiconductors</h3>As scientists began to develop a much deeper appreciation for the various properties of materials, particularly from the mid-19th century onward, one of the key behaviors they described was how readily or not an electric current passed through the material. Some substances, such as wood or glass, appeared to resist the passage of electricity, while others conducted currents easily. The former were used to insulate and the latter, such as copper and then aluminum, as conductors, typically in the form of wires. These investigations of electrical properties turned up another class of materials that resided midway between the two main classes. Such "semiconductors," including carbon, allowed electric currents to pass but only poorly and with some physical response. (Carbon, for example, tends to heat up, which is why it was the material Edison found suitable for the filaments of his light bulb.)These 19th-century investigators could never have suspected that in the latter part of the next century, these semiconductors would be put to work in ways that would transform our world as profoundly as any other material. Early in the 20th century, inventors devised means of controlling electrical currents and waves in remarkable ways, leading to marvelous new forms of communication, such as radio and television. The means they discovered involved controlling the actions of electrons: When these movements were controlled precisely, sound, light, and other phenomena could be picked up, transmitted, replicated, amplified, and manipulated to inform, entertain, investigate, and calculate in ways never before possible.At first this electronic control depended on vacuum tubes, but this was at a great expense in energy, speed, and efficiency. Spurred on by World War II and then the rapid expansion of demands for communications and control technologies, alternatives to vacuum tubes, such as the transistor, began to appear in the post-war years. These alternatives, at first made with very exotic and expensive semiconductor materials, were not initially easy to manufacture or use. But when chemists discovered how to create large and very pure crystals of silicon, a host of new possibilities opened up. With the development of the techniques for imprinting cheaply and reliably entire complex circuits, including the workings of digital computers, onto wafers of silicon, a revolution in information and communications became possible—a revolution that we continue to see unfolding before us today.
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From ceramics to steel, paper to plastics, certain basic substances have long propped up civilization.

A History of Vaccination

<div class="rich-text">Vaccination began as a traditional therapy over a thousand years ago.</div>
<div class="rich-text">Vaccines are often seen as a marvel of modern medicine. Surprisingly, the history of vaccination extends back centuries. This animated sequence details the intriguing history of vaccination, beginning more than a millennium ago.
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<div class="rich-text"><h3>
 A History of Vaccination
</h3>

 Posted: September 5, 2014


 
 Narrator
 
 : As surprising as it may seem, vaccination began as a type of traditional therapy at least 1,000 years ago.


 In India, when a wave of smallpox approached a town, there are tales of people doing something extraordinary—they were lining up to actually buy the disease. The healers, known as Brahmins, would take a cloth and rub the person's upper arm. Then they would scratch the skin, just enough to draw blood. They would then apply dried smallpox scabs, taken from patients who had survived the disease.


 Most people would get sick, but recover and from that point on, they were protected. Over 1,000 years ago, the Brahmins had observed one of the basic principles of immunity—that you rarely get infected twice.


 
 Dr. Paul Offit
 
 :â¨ We've got to give people credit. I mean, they got it right. They knew that there was something going on, that protected you—they just had no idea what it was or why.


 
 Narrator
 
 : This early form of inoculation was called "variolation." Some say it originally came from Africa, others believe it began as an ancient form of Chinese medicine, where the powder of dried smallpox scabs was blown up the nose.


 
 Dr. Peter Fisher
 
 :â¨ We know that as early as 1000 AD, the Chinese were using variolation, using smallpox to prevent smallpox. And they were using some very advanced techniques actually what we would now call, you know, techniques you could recognize in modern virology.


 
 Narrator
 
 : Importantly, they always used a weakened form of the disease.


 
 Fisher
 
 :â¨ They would select out the mild cases. And they would collect the lymph and put it in a vial and let it dry out and carry it in their pockets for two or three weeks, so you got at least a semi-killed vaccine. The viruses were, if not dead, certainly moribund.


 
 Narrator
 
 : From the Brahmins in India, we fast-forward around 700 years to Europe, where over 400,000 people were dying from smallpox every year.


 An English mother, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, had only just survived smallpox and she desperately wanted to protect her children. Whilst in Constantinople, she wrote of seeing a practice unheard of in English medicine.


 
 Voiceover
 
 : The old woman comes with a nutshell full of the best sort of small pox and asks what vein you please to have opened. She immediately rips open that you offer to her, which gives you no more pain than a common scratch and puts into the vein as much matter as can lie upon the head of her needle.


 
 Narrator
 
 : Like the Brahmins, the local women practiced a form of folk medicine, handed down through generations.


 
 Voiceover
 
 : The children play together all the rest of the day. Then the fever begins to seize them, and they keep their beds two days, very seldom three. And in eight days time, they are as well as before their illness.


 
 Narrrator
 
 : Lady Mary inoculated her own son, providing him with something remarkable—immunity.


 
 Offit
 
 : People knew that if you fought a particular disease and you survived it and you were immune for the rest of your life, that was a good thing. So people tried to figure out how can they essentially simulate that infection without really causing suffering and death, but still inducing the immunity that comes from that.


 
 Narrator
 
 : Lady Mary brought the technique back to England, where it was widely accepted. They didn't understand why it worked, and it was never risk-free. But the death rate with wild smallpox was around 30%. With variolation, it dropped to 2%.


 Fast forward another 70 years to an English doctor called Edward Jenner, who took the next vital step. He proved that deliberate infection with a mild, non-fatal disease—called cowpox—would protect against smallpox. He called his technique "vaccination," from
 
 vacca
 
 , Latin for cow.


 
 Fisher
 
 :â¨ The one thing that Jenner discovered was that vaccinia, or cowpox, which is generally a very mild disease in humans cross reacts—it prevents smallpox. It was his only discovery, an important discovery, but people think that he invented the whole idea, which he didn't.
</div>

<div class="rich-text">Vaccination began as a traditional therapy over a thousand years ago.</div>

A Short History of Quarantine

The Venetian model held sway until the discovery in the late 1800s that germs cause disease, after which health officials began tailoring quarantines with individual microbes in mind. In the mid-20th century, the advent of antibiotics and routine vaccinations made large-scale quarantines a thing of the past, but today bioterrorism and newly emergent diseases like SARS threaten to resurrect the age-old custom, potentially on the scale of entire cities. In this time line, follow the evolution of quarantine, from Roman times to the present.

<figure class="richtext-image full-width">
<img alt="" class="richtext-image full-width" src="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/media/images/short-history-of-quarantine-01.width-990_VADaBow.jpg"/>
<figcaption>The caption to this drawing from an 1858 issue of <cite>Harper's Weekly</cite> quotes a Dr. Anderson as saying: "While the Angel of Death rides on the fumes of the iron scow, and infected airs are wafted to our shores from the anchorage, we shall have no security against these annual visitations of pestilence."
 
 <div class="credit">© Corbis Images</div>
</figcaption>
</figure>


A.D. 549

	In the wake of one of history's most devastating epidemics of bubonic plague, the Byzantine emperor Justinian enacts a law meant to hinder and isolate people arriving from plague-infested regions.

583

	The Council of Lyons restricts lepers from freely associating with healthy persons.

600s

	China has a well-established policy to detain plague-stricken sailors and foreign travelers who arrive in Chinese ports.

1179

	The Third Lateran Council decrees living arrangements for lepers and how their necessary separation from society is to take place.

1200

	Europe now has some 19,000 leprosaria, or houses for leper patients; France alone boasts roughly 2,000.

1300s

	A number of European and Asian countries begin enforcing quarantines of infected regions by encircling them with armed guards. Those caught escaping from afflicted areas are returned and sometimes executed as a warning to others.

1348

	Venice establishes the world's first institutionalized system of quarantine, giving a council of three the power to detain ships, cargoes, and individuals in the Venetian lagoon for up to 40 days. The act comes in the midst of the Black Death, a plague epidemic that eventually takes the lives of 14 to 15 million people across Europe, or up to one-fifth of the population.

1374

	The Duke of Milan draws up an edict mandating that all those suffering from plague should be taken outside the city to a field or forest until they either recover or die. Three years later, the town of Ragusa establishes a quarantine station where all people arriving from plague-infested regions are kept isolated for a month for "purification by sun and wind."

<figure class="richtext-image full-width">
<img alt="" class="richtext-image full-width" src="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/media/images/short-history-of-quarantine-02.width-990_bYFzmFf.jpg"/>
<figcaption>Lazarus, the sore-covered leper in Christ's parable, became the patron saint of leprosy, which was perhaps the first "quarantinable" disease. The term "lazaretto," which refers to a quarantine hospital or station, may be a combination of his name and Santa Maria di Nazareth, the church on the Venetian island where the first quarantine station was opened.
 
 <div class="credit">© Corbis Images/Barnes Foundation</div>
</figcaption>
</figure>


1403

	Venice establishes the world's first known maritime quarantine station, or lazaretto, on Santa Maria di Nazareth, an island in the Venetian lagoon.

1521

	France's first maritime quarantine opens at Marseilles. A century later, city officials enact a law forbidding travelers from entering the city without a preliminary medical examination.

1629

	Sanitary legislation drawn up in Venice requires health officers to visit houses during plague epidemics and isolate those infected in pest-houses situated away from populated areas.

1647

	With infectious diseases in mind, officials in Boston draw up an ordinance requiring all arriving ships to pause at the harbor entrance or risk a $100 fine.

1656

	After a plague epidemic kills 100,000 people in Naples, Rome begins inspecting all incoming ships and patrolling its border in hopes of keeping the plague out. When Romans start dying from plague in the city's Trastevere slum and Jewish ghetto, officials seal and monitor these districts. It does little good: in the coming months, about 10,000 people in Rome succumb to plague.

<figure class="richtext-image full-width">
<img alt="" class="richtext-image full-width" src="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/media/images/short-history-of-quarantine-03.width-990_wbAkdXl.jpg"/>
<figcaption>In the Middle Ages, no disease wreaked such havoc across Europe as bubonic plague. In this woodcut from 1512, a doctor and his assistants tend to a plague patient.
 
 <div class="credit">© Corbis Images</div>
</figcaption>
</figure>


1663

	During a smallpox epidemic in New York City, the General Assembly passes a law forbidding people coming from infected areas from entering the city until sanitary officials deem them no threat to residents.

1663

	With plague ravaging parts of continental Europe, the English monarchy issues royal decrees calling for the establishment of permanent quarantines. All London-bound ships, whether English or foreign, must pause at the mouth of the Thames River for 40 days (and sometimes 80). The quarantine fails, however, to stave off the disease, which assails the country in 1665-1666.

1664-1665

	When the plague epidemic reaches Russia, officials organize quarantines and prohibit entry into Moscow of people from other countries, under threat of death.

1666

	The city of Frankfurt issues a decree prohibiting people living in plague-infected houses from visiting churches or markets, and from removing and selling the clothing of plague victims without first fumigating, washing, and airing the garments.

<figure class="richtext-image full-width">
<img alt="pleasure pains" class="richtext-image full-width" src="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/media/images/short-history-of-quarantine-04.width-990_3NQQnnr.jpg"/>
<figcaption>In this engraving from about 1660, a syphilis sufferer gets fumigated in a special oven. The caption on the oven translates as "For one pleasure a thousand pains."
 
 <div class="credit">© Corbis Images</div>
</figcaption>
</figure>


1700s

	All major towns and cities along the eastern seaboard of the United States have now passed quarantine laws, though typically these laws are enforced only when epidemics appear imminent.

1701

	A Massachusetts statute stipulates that all individuals suffering from plague, smallpox, and other contagious diseases must be isolated in separate houses.

1712

	A plague epidemic around the Baltic Sea leads England to pass the Quarantine Act. During a mandatory 40-day quarantine for arriving ships, goods cannot be removed, and serious breaches of the act can result in the death penalty.

1738

	With smallpox and yellow fever threatening to strike New York, the City Council sets up a quarantine anchorage off Bedloe's Island (home of the Statue of Liberty today). The island becomes a quarantine station for contagious passengers and crew from arriving ships.

<figure class="richtext-image full-width">
<img alt="yellow fever" class="richtext-image full-width" src="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/media/images/short-history-of-quarantine-05.width-990_vTRkjkK.jpg"/>
<figcaption>During the yellow fever epidemic of 1793, Philadelphia authorities sent carriages around the city to pick up the dead and dying.
 
 <div class="credit">© Bettmann/CORBIS</div>
</figcaption>
</figure>


1799

	With memories still fresh of a nasty 1793 yellow fever epidemic that struck Philadelphia, then the capital of the United States, the city builds an expansive quarantine station called the Lazaretto along the Delaware River about 10 miles south of town. Occupying ten acres, the building still exists today.

1808

	The Boston Board of Health orders that, between May and October of every year, ships arriving from the Caribbean, Mediterranean, and other tropical ports be quarantined for three full days or until 25 days have passed since they left port, whichever is longer.

1832

	After about 30,000 people in Britain alone die in a cholera epidemic in 1831-1832, New York mandates in June 1832 that no ship can approach within 300 yards of any dock if its captain suspects or knows the ship has cholera aboard. The disease slips through the safety net, however, killing nearly 3,500 of the city's 250,000 residents before it ends in September.

1850-1851

	Following horrific epidemics of plague and cholera that spread through Europe from Egypt and Turkey towards the middle of the 19th century, the first international sanitary conference is held in Paris, with an eye to making quarantine an international cooperative effort. These sanitary conferences continue well into the 20th century.

1863

	New York State's new Quarantine Act calls for a quarantine office run by a health officer who has the power to detain any ship entering the port of New York for as long as he deems necessary. The health officer can also order all cargo to be removed and a ship cleaned and fumigated.

1866

	In April the steamer Virginia arrives in New York harbor from Liverpool, its passengers riddled with cholera. Discovering that 35 steerage passengers and two crew have died during the voyage, the city's health officer orders a swift quarantine. This and other strict quarantines undertaken during the ensuing epidemic prove successful in limiting deaths to about 600, a modest number compared to previous outbreaks.

1879

	Amid concern about yellow fever, the U.S. Congress establishes the National Board of Health, in part to assume responsibility for quarantine in cases where states' actions had proven ineffective. The board tries but fails to impose a national quarantine, and it dissolves for lack of funding in 1883.

<figure class="richtext-image full-width">
<img alt="" class="richtext-image full-width" src="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/media/images/short-history-of-quarantine-06.width-990_2kyc7df.jpg"/>
<figcaption>"The kind of 'assisted emigrant' we can not afford to admit." So reads the caption to this 1883 Puck drawing, which shows members of the New York Board of Health wielding a bottle of carbolic acid, a disinfectant, in their attempts to keep cholera at bay.
 
 <div class="credit">© Corbis Images</div>
</figcaption>
</figure>


1890s

	As the era of bacteriology arrives, with major diseases like typhoid and cholera determined to arise from germs, the length and nature of quarantine evolves, now often based on the life cycles of specific microbes.

1892

	When an Asiatic cholera epidemic reaches the U.S. in the fall, President Benjamin Harrison has his surgeon general issue an order holding that "no vessel from any foreign port carrying immigrants shall be admitted to enter any port of the United States until such vessel shall have undergone quarantine detention of twenty days, and such greater number of days as may be fixed in each special case by the State authorities."

1893

	The U.S. Congress passes the National Quarantine Act. The act creates a national system of quarantine while still permitting state-run quarantines, and it codifies standards for medically inspecting immigrants, ships, and cargoes, a task now in the hands of the federal Marine Hospital Service.

1894

	Epidemics of plague in China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan, as well as in India two years later, fly in the face of arguments promulgated by most European scientists of the day that the widespread scourges that ransacked Europe in the Middle Ages are history.

1900

	In March, Chick Gin, the Chinese proprietor of a lumberyard, dies of bubonic plague in a flophouse in the Chinese quarter of San Francisco. Authorities immediately rope off the 15-block neighborhood, quarantining roughly 25,000 Chinese and closing businesses owned by nonwhites. In June, a court rules the quarantine racist and lifts it, declaring that health officials acted with an "evil eye and an unequal hand."

1902

	The Pan American Sanitary Bureau is established. It is the first of a series of international health organizations formed in the 20th century—culminating with the World Health Organization in 1948—that help to bring issues of quarantine and the control of disease to a global stage.

<figure class="richtext-image full-width">
<img alt="Marys House" class="richtext-image full-width" src="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/media/images/short-history-of-quarantine-07.width-990_OrNHmIF.jpg"/>
<figcaption>The cottage on North Brother Island in New York's East River where Mary Mallon, better known as Typhoid Mary, was quarantined from 1907 to 1910, and again from 1915 until her death in 1938.
 
 <div class="credit">Courtesy of NYC Municipal Archives</div>
</figcaption>
</figure>


	1903 In an attempt to isolate tuberculosis patients, the New York City Department of Health opens a quarantine facility at Riverside Hospital on North Brother Island, an islet in the East River. Mary Mallon, aka "Typhoid Mary," begins what becomes a total of 26 years of quarantine here in 1907.

1916

	When an epidemic of poliomyletis strikes New York residents, authorities begin forcibly separating children from their parents and placing them in quarantine. Wealthy parents, however, can keep their stricken children at home if they can provide a separate room and medical care. By November the epidemic has runs its course, but not before killing more than 2,300 mostly young New Yorkers.

1917-1919

	During World War I, American authorities incarcerate more than 30,000 prostitutes in an effort to curb the spread of venereal disease. The historian Allan Brandt has called this effort "the most concerted attack on civil liberties in the name of public health in American history."

<figure class="richtext-image full-width">
<img alt="immigration station" class="richtext-image full-width" src="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/media/images/short-history-of-quarantine-08.width-990_cgb4ZUH.jpg"/>
<figcaption>As this photograph from about 1930 shows, anyone arriving at the Immigration Station on New York's Ellis Island who appeared to have a communicable disease was immediately segregated. If diagnosis confirmed the suspicion, that person was quarantined in a hospital until he or she was no longer contagious.
 
 <div class="credit">Courtesy of National Library of Medicine</div>
</figcaption>
</figure>


1944

	The Public Health Service Act is codified, clearly establishing the quarantine authority of the federal government, which has controlled all U.S. quarantine stations since 1921.

1945

	In Baltimore, the mayor passes an ordinance giving health authorities the power to isolate at the city's hospitals those patients with syphilis or gonorrhea who refuse penicillin treatment. The ordinance is rarely invoked, however, as the treatment takes at most only a few days, and most patients willingly accept the assistance.

1949

	To help stem the spread of tuberculosis, Seattle creates a locked ward for TB sufferers who deny treatment. The ward becomes a model for other cities.

1967

	The U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare transfers responsibility for quarantine to the National Communicable Disease Center, now the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

1986

	Treating the first cases of HIV/AIDS in the country as a public health emergency, Cuba begins compulsory, indefinite quarantine for citizens testing positive for HIV. Three years later, rules are relaxed to allow such patients to leave sanatoriums for long stretches, and beginning in 1993, HIV patients can choose to live at home after an eight-week course at a sanatorium.

1990s

	To help control multidrug-resistant tuberculosis, New York City detains more than 200 people who refuse voluntary treatment, confining most of them to the secure ward of a hospital for about six months. One patient said the hardest part of this enforced treatment was "being bored like an oyster."

2001

	In the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks, health officials, at the behest of the CDC, release in December a draft of the proposed Model State Emergency Health Powers Act. The act gives states greater powers to quarantine people in the event of a bioterrorist attack involving a lethal microbe such as smallpox. By July 2002, emergency health powers legislation has passed in 19 states and been introduced in 17 others.

<figure class="richtext-image full-width">
<img alt="" class="richtext-image full-width" src="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/media/images/short-history-of-quarantine-09.width-990_9B1frk4.jpg"/>
<figcaption>A SARS patient receives treatment at a hospital in Guangzhou, China, in April 2003. Though some countries were slow to implement quarantine measures in the face of the world's first SARS outbreak, officials ultimately credited quarantine, particularly in Canada, with helping to keep the number of global SARS cases to about 8,000, with 780 deaths.
 
 <div class="credit">© Corbis Images</div>
</figcaption>
</figure>


2003

	An outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, in Asia and Canada occurs in the spring. Officials credit the use of both isolation (for those sick with SARS) and quarantine (for those exposed to the sick) with forestalling an even more severe epidemic. In April, President George W. Bush adds SARS to the list of quarantinable diseases, which also include cholera, diphtheria, infectious tuberculosis, plague, smallpox, yellow fever, and viral hemorrhagic fevers such as the Ebola and Marburg viruses.

2004

	The Division of Global Migration and Quarantine, part of the CDC's National Center for Infectious Diseases, controls quarantine issues in the United States today. The Division oversees eight national quarantine stations—in New York, Atlanta, Miami, Chicago, Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Honolulu. At present, federal, state, and some city health officials have the right to isolate or quarantine individuals who are ill or may become ill with a potentially lethal infectious disease.

From Roman times to the present, follow an illustrated time line on the separation of the diseased from the healthy.

Psychedelics as Medicine: The History of Peyote

Indigenous communities use this small psychedelic cactus as a medicinal herb.
Peyote is an important medicinal plant that is used in rites of passage and in religious and healing ceremonies in Indigenous communities.
Psychedelics as Medicine: The History of PeyotePublished October 19, 2022NARRATOR: In many cultures, psychedelics have been used in rites of passage and to gain wisdom, usually administered in specific religious and healing ceremonies. In North America, some indigenous peoples use peyote, a cactus that grows in northern Mexico and a small region of south Texas.ADRIAN PRIMEAUX: I am Adrian Primeaux. I come from five generations of peyote people, myself being the sixth, and then my son being the seventh generation. To me, peyote it’s a very intimate medicinal herb. We use it as a guide; we use it as a means to synchronize with the universe. My grandparents explained to me, at a very young age, that we could acquire any means of success through medicine and peyote if we approached it with the right intent.NARRATOR: Peyote use can touch on many aspects of life.ADRIAN PRIMEAUX: How this medicine is able to heal, there’s a lot of complex facets. Within indigenous forms of thought, we believe that, like, the spirit exists somewhere back there in the subconscious, it’s connected to the universe. So, this plant medicine helps you reach those depths of your ability to manifest whatever it is you can picture in your mind. Maybe you’re picturing pain going away; maybe you’re picturing your cancer going away; maybe you’re picturing your body being healthy; maybe you’re picturing education. Whatever it is that you’re picturing, your subconscious brain has that power to create that for you. And this medicine is just the tool to help you to reach that point.YASMIN HURD: When we think about how native people have used these drugs, it was a ritual. So, there’s something still really important about the setting, the ritualistic aspect. You can see this positive outcome, you can hear the positivity around you, all of that then gets encoded into the brain, in a manner that, when you’re not in that hallucinogenic state it still stays with you.NARRATOR: A peyote cactus can take over 10 years to reach maturity. Since the arrival of Europeans, Native American tribes have often been persecuted for peyote use and had limited access to the plant. Now, commercial interests and poachers are putting undue pressure on peyote’s fragile ecosystem. Recently, a philanthropist purchased 605 acres of peyote land, here in South Texas, to provide access for members of the Native American Church, which teaches Native American traditions, sometimes elements of Christianity, and regards peyote as a sacrament.STEVEN S. BENALLY (Dine Nation): In order to assure that this medicine is going to be available, we have to have some kind of direct connection with this land. And this land, I think, is an answer to a prayer from years ago, that there will be medicine for our children.SANDOR IRON ROPE (Titonwan Lakota Oyate): This land now means the world to all of us. Mother Earth and what she has provided us, this represents the future. It’s about what you are going to teach your children, your grandchildren, and what you’re going to leave behind, the essence of, of generational responsibilities, you know? Words cannot suffice what the spirit feels in connecting with this land.

Indigenous communities use this small psychedelic cactus as a medicinal herb.