In public health discourse the body is regarded as dangerous, problematic,
ever threatening to run out of control, to attract disease, to pose
imminent danger to the rest of society (Lupton, 1995; Petersen and
Lupton, 1997). For centuries and up to the present day, concerns about the
spread of infectious diseases such as cholera, smallpox, yellow fever and
the plague have resulted in measures being taken by the state to confine
bodies and control their movements. This control over bodies in the name
of public health has often been coercive and discriminatory. For example,
from the sixteenth to the early twentieth centuries, whole households of
people were confined to their houses if public health officials designated
one member as infectious, or people were removed to quarantine stations
or lazarettos, sometimes by the police (Tesh, 1988: 12).