Essay - Isolation, an Ancient and Lonely Practice, Endures - NYTimes.com

Historically speaking, people with the bad luck to develop an infection have never had it so good. Modern medicine can deploy a vast array of antibiotics and other tools for their benefit.

For some of them, though, our shiny, state-of-the-art treatment includes a direct carryover from the Middle Ages.

These are the people who are not just infected on the inside but also infested on the outside, covered with germs. And when they are hospitalized we hustle them into an isolation room, and no matter how much they may protest and complain, and no matter how cumbersome it makes the rest of their medical care, we never let them out.