Quarantine and the plague: being a summary of the report on these subjects, recently addressed to the Royal Academy of Medicine in France / [by R.C. Prus]; with introductory observations, extracts from Parliamentary correspondence, and notes.

  • Milroy, Gavin, 1805-1886.
Date:
1846
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Quarantine and the plague: being a summary of the report on these subjects, recently addressed to the Royal Academy of Medicine in France / [by R.C. Prus]; with introductory observations, extracts from Parliamentary correspondence, and notes. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    data that are found in the narrations of preceding writers. Most of them seem to-have looked for corroboration of already adopted opinions in the cases which came under their notice, and not to have examined the actual phenomena of the cases themselves to teach them what opinions they should hold. Hence the comparative unprofitableness of most of the works on the Plague published before 1835. Then it was that the entire subject of its history was examined de novo, all the materials connected with it stirred up, so to speak, from the bottom, and subjected to a most sifting investigation, while nothing was assumed or taken for granted upon hear¬ say evidence or partial enquiry. The evidence that has been made public by that noble band of devoted Frenchmen, of whose labours we shall presently speak at large, and of our own countrymen, Drs. Laidlaw and Abbott, is infinitely more useful than the labours of all previous writers. But, not among medical men only have sounder views prevailed on the subject of the plague since 1835; the consular agents, ambassadors, and ministers of this country and of France have also largely partaken of the same advancing enlightenment. It is indeed most gratifying to read the official correspondence of public men in both countries upon this sub¬ ject. While in Italy, within the last eight or ten years, bars of iron have been actually passed through the fire to destroy the contagion adhering to them, and vessels from Great Britain have, been subjected to a quarantine at Messina in consequence of a report in a French newspaper that typhus fever existed in Glasgow ; while a quarantine of 42 days has been insti¬ tuted in more than one country against the invasion of East India Cholera, and a cargo of New Orleans cotton, that had been landed and re-shipped at Liverpool, has been declared at Copenhagen infected after another fort¬ night’s voyage—while these and many such-like things have been acted over and over again in different European ports during the last few years, it is nevertheless equally true that men of education everywhere have begun to feel the urgent necessity of putting an end to such absurdities. The credit of taking the lead in this much needed reform is equally shared by France and this country. In 1838, a proposal was made by the French to the British Government to promote the formation of a general Congress of Delegates from the various European states having ports in the Mediterranean, for the purpose of agreeing upon some uniform system of Quarantine regulations to be adopted by all. Our Government at once acceded to the proposal. Aus¬ tria also, which had been applied to by France at the same time, intimated at first her assent to its general principles and substance, only with some modifications in the details. Difficulties, however, were subsequently started ; and the result was, most unfortunately, that the matter dropped entirely for the next four or five years. In the course of the same year (1838), and indeed anterior to the date of the proposal of the French Government, we find that Mr. Lewis, one of Her Majesty’s commissioners for enquiring into the affairs of Malta, in a very able document respecting Quarantine regulations in the Mediterra¬ nean, after expressly asserting that “ it is notorious that the mode or modes in which plague is communicated are very imperfectly known, and that some of the maxims, on which the most important Quarantine regulations rest, are little better than gratuitous hypotheses,” suggested that two or