lazaret

lasaretti A lazaretto.
1819, Lord Byron, Don Juan, II.215:

The liver is the lazaret of bile, / But very rarely executes its function (..)

But the civilising was so complete that the survivors of the original inhabitants numbered seven, of whom two were dying of consumption in the Native Compound, three confined in the Native Lazaret with leprosy, the rest, a man and a woman, living in a gunyah at the remote end of Devilfish Bay, subsisting on what food they could get from the bush and the sea and what they could buy with the pennies the man earned by doing odd jobs and the woman by prostitution.

The director was locked up in the same institution with his patients, and the institution was equally cut off, isolated on the outskirts of the city like an ancient lazaret with its lepers.