In the context of historical studies, there is a fundamental question about whether the stigmatization, surveillance, incarceration, displacement, and execution of those deemed sick, degenerate, heretical, dangerous, outcasts, or generally "different," in the name of protecting the social whole, are processes intertwined with modernity or if they are transhistorical, thus universal and stable.
Historians and health sociologists have focused on the complex processes that led to the creation of state welfare institutions and the assurance of public health. These processes were essentially accelerated and rationalized by biomedical discourse, as well as by the centralized-interventionist state of the modern period.
The places of confinement and isolation for those considered "dangerous" to public safety and health, in relation to the associated repressive and medical practices, multiplied during the 19th and into the first half of the 20th century.
