Minutes of the proceedings of the Quarantine Convention : held at Philadelphia by invitation of the Philadelphia Board of Health, May 13-15, 1857.

  • Quarantine Convention (May 13-15, 1857 : Philadelphia, Pa.)
Date:
1857
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Minutes of the proceedings of the Quarantine Convention : held at Philadelphia by invitation of the Philadelphia Board of Health, May 13-15, 1857. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

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    In a sanitary as well as in a commercial aspect, a change is alike desirable and politically demanded in the fundamental principles, upon which all our quarantine laws are based. As regards the former, they have by no means kept pace with the rapid strides recently observed in the science of public hygiene, and with respect to the latter, they are singularly burdensome, by clogging the wheels of a foreign trade, whenever and wherever enforced. The commercial, the political, and the social interests of the nation, cry aloud for a re-moulding of these external health laws, while the voice of humanity may be heard, pleading for the adoption of measures less offensive to the dictates of benevo- lence. No State or seaboard city is entirely satisfied with its existing quarantine laws, owing in part to the great diversity of senti- ment and uninformed prejudices, among those especially who are the custodians of these laws. Frequent and loud, also, are the complaints urged by others equally interested, of their onerous and unequal character; mischievous where they should be harm- less, and disadvantageous where they should be protective. Governed by these views, and desirous of beholding a code of laws (uniform under all similar circumstances, if possible,) as would offer the fewest interruptions to an active commerce, and at tbe same time guard that commerce, so that it may not be- come a channel for the introduction of any agent which might affect the health or life of those dwelling in the seaports, the Board of Health of Philadelphia, in October, 1856, appointed a committee to correspond with the Boards of Health of New York, Boston, Baltimore and New Orleans, on the propriety of calling a convention of delegates from the various boards of health in the maritime cities of the United States, for the pur- pose of a conference in relation to the establishment of a revised and uniform system of quarantine laws. Receiving the hearty concurrence of the bodies thus addressed, to the proposed measure, and believing the time fully arrived when the propriety of such a deliberative assembly will receive
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