Second report on quarantine : yellow fever : with appendices / [by the] General Board of Health.

  • Great Britain. General Board of Health.
Date:
1852
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Second report on quarantine : yellow fever : with appendices / [by the] General Board of Health. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    regard them in some degree as securities; but founded on recent experience, the Royal College of Physicians of London have changed their former beliei, have declared an opinion in accordance with that previously expressed by the General Board of Health, and have recorded their conclusion in the following words :— *' Cholera appears to have been very rarely communicated by personal intercourse, and all attempts to stay its progress by Cordons or Quarantine have failed. From these circumstances^ the Committee, without expressing any positive opinion with respect to its contagious or non-conlagious nature, agree in drawing this practical conclusion^ that in a district where Cholera prevails, no appreciable increase of danger is incurred by ministering to persons atl'ected with it, and no safety afforded to the community by the isolation of the sick. From the atmospheric or climatic changes which have in every country generally preceded an outbreak of Epidemic Cholera,—from the extent of its range traversing the globe in zones,—from the steadiness and in many instances the post-like regularity of its course,—from the number and distance of the points of its simultaneous outbreaks,—and from the wide spread infection of popu- lations with symptoms indicating its actual presence and operation many days, and in some instances weeks, before it assumed its proper and developed shape,—it appeared in the highest degree improbable that a Quarantine vessel placed at the entrance of a seaport, or a line of soldiers guarding the frontier of a country, should exert any real influence in staying the progress of this pestilence; and recent experience has rendered the fallacy of this expecta- tion so palpable, that the attempt to avert the visitation of Epidemic Cholera by such an agency has been not unaptly compared, to that of the countryman who endeavoured to pound out the crows, by shutting the park gates. Were there, then, no other epidemic diseases against which Quarantine is supposed to be a protection, we might justly consider that recent experience has established the fact of its uselessness: but as it appears to be still the opinion of some persons that the public safety requires the intervention of Quarantine, particularly against Yellow Fever and Plague, we now proceed to state such miormation as has been submitted to us, respecting the 13 2