Bulletin of Latin American Research, Vol. 39, No. S1, pp. 117–120, 2020 Isolation in Times of Epidemic: Refections for our Present from a Smallpox Epidemic in Concepción (Chile) PAULA CAFFARENA Universidad Finis Terrae, Chile This article seeks to put in historical perspective the implementation of isolation measures such as quarantines, widely used today to tackle COVID-19. Based on an epidemic that affected the city of Concepción (Chile) in 1789, I analyse the isolation measures adopted by the author- ities, the diffculties they had to face in their implementation, and their reception by the local population. It is concluded that lessons from history should take into consideration the dynamic interaction of the public and the private spheres that characterise the experience of the disease in any given epidemic. Keywords: contagion, COVID-19, epidemic, isolation, quarantine, smallpox. The COVID-19 pandemic has sparked a new interest in the history of health. The imple- mentation of emergency procedures such as quarantines and sanitary cordons to slow down its progress reminds us that contagion and isolation measures have a long history. Beyond changes and advances in the feld of medicine, reducing mobility and contact between people has always been necessary to prevent the spread of any infection. This is the public dimension of the disease, which, at the same time, is closely connected to a private one, since any disease is an intimate experience that affects our personal life. The history of smallpox before vaccination, the implementation of sanitary measures to fght it, as well as people’s reactions to these measures, are vivid examples of the entan- glement between the public and private spheres that takes place whenever an epidemic emerges. This suggests that looking at current isolation measures to prevent the spread of COVID-19 with a historical perspective allows a better understanding of our past but also of our present. In this article, I analyse the measures undertaken in eighteenth-century Chile to fght smallpox, the major challenges that the authorities of the period had to face, and the reaction to isolation measures by the local population. To do this, I focus on the smallpox outbreak that affected the city of Concepción in 1789, where the death toll, according to the available data, reached roughly 20 percent of the population (Caffarena, 2016: 79). © 2020 Society for Latin American Studies 117