Australian maritime quarantine and the evolution of international agreements concerning quarantine.

  • Cumpston, J. H. L. (John Howard Lidgett), 1880-1954.
Date:
1913
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Australian maritime quarantine and the evolution of international agreements concerning quarantine. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service. The original may be consulted at London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service.

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    crew may be released under surveillance, or may be detained under observation at a Quarantine Station. The minimum periods of deten- tion at a station, or for surveillance, are prescribed as: — Small-pox ... ... 18 days. Typhus Fever ... ... 14 days. Yellow Fever ... ... 7 days. Plague ... ... ... 7 days. Cholera ... ... ... 7 days. Release under surveillance is, in the case of small-pox, only permitted for persons primarily vaccinated or re-vaccinated more than fourteen days and less than seven years. In actual practice, the application of the principle of surveillance is applied wherever possible, consistent with the reservation just mentioned, and is freely applied in the case of plague infection. The above statement makes it clear that there is no essential difference between the Australian and the European systems as systems. The one fundamental point of difference is the inclusion of small-pox in tlie diseases against which measures of protection are taken. In this respect, as has already been pointed out, the authorities have been actuated by precisely the same motives as the authorities of other countries. The Australian population is, from the point of view of the hygienist, an unvaccinated population, the only State having any effective system of vaccination being Victoria. Small-pox, moreover, is not endemic m Australia, and has become epidemic just often enough and severely enough to produce a wholesome dread of the disease in the minds of the responsible authorities. The last epidemic was in 1903.* Under these circumstances, the application of the system of frontier defence against disease, known in Australia as quarantine, is entirely in accord with the principles upon which all such measures of sanitary maritime defence are based, and in their details the measures prescribed in respect of small-pox are entirely in harmony with the measures prescribed, and recognised also by European Conventions, for other diseases. * Since this pamph'et wag written an ontbreak of small-pox in Sydney h-<s occiirreri. This outbreak ad not been brought under control at the time this piniphlet was published. 1st September, 1913. Printed and Published fur the Government of the Commonwealth of Australia by Atdert J Mui.i.ETT, Government Printer for the State of Victoria.