In these days of quarantine we have the opportunity to look at how things are not so different than in years past. The word quarantine itself comes from a Latin word meaning “forty”because that was how long a victim of infection had to be isolated during the bubonic plague: 40 days. Literature includes many works involving pandemics. Daniel Defoe published his “ A Journal of the Plague” in 1722.It was an account of the experiences of those who lived with the London plague of 1665. It was a history but the actual journal of one living through that plague in London was included by the great diarist, Samuel Pepys.“Love in the Time of Cholera” by Gabriel Garcia Marquez involves the story of an unfaithful husband who is devoted to the eradication of cholera in Latin America. He falls off a ladder and dies and in the old age of his widow loves blossoms with her original love that her father had discouraged. It is also a movie made recently starring Javier Bardem. And for a movie that plots the rigors of life in, and the need to deal with, a plague you might consider the Stephen Soderberg movie named “Contagion.” It is prescient and entertaining but maybe a little too close to reality to be wholly entertaining. Stay safe, isolate and consider that we are reliving history as it repeats itself.