Sketch of the operation and of some of the most striking results of quarantine in British ports since the beginning of the present century.

  • Gavin Milroy
Date:
1853
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Sketch of the operation and of some of the most striking results of quarantine in British ports since the beginning of the present century. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    life; and on which the - value of their advice is not confined within the circle of mere professional criticism, but will he subjected to the scrutiny of all who are inter¬ ested in the freedom of international intercourse, from the statesman and the legislator down to the merchant and the traveller. And yet, strange to say, there is not a topic in medical literature which has been so imperfectly handled, or on which there is less reliable evidence on the one hand, and a greater amount of extravagant and absurd assertion on the other. Unfortunately, too, there is not a single work in existence, as far as I know, to which any one seeking for detailed and trustworthy information upon the subject of quarantine can be referred. It is not so much as even named in the Cyclopaedia of Medicine, published in 1835 ; while Ur. Copland, in his elaborate Dictionary, has, under the head of Protection from Pestilences, treated it with so little precision and clearness, and under the manifest influ¬ ence of so strong a bias to particular one-sided views, that the reader finds himself both perplexed and unsatisfied. Nor has the subject fared better in the standard encyclo- psedias of general information. In the last edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, published so recently as 1842, there is the most meagre mention possible—not exceeding a couple of dozen lines;—although the commercial bearings of quarantine are so important, that it has been estimated that a loss of little short of a million sterling is thereby annually inflicted on our shipping ; and even this brief notice is not free from palpable error. Occasionally, at distant intervals, an article in a literary review has drawn public attention to the general question, or to some particular details ; but never with the scope of a systematic or comprehensive inquiry. You thus see how imperfectly the subject has hitherto