Quarantine

“ QUARANTINE (Fr. quarantaine, a period of forty days [1] ) , a term originally applied to the old sanitary preventive system of detention of ships and men, unlading of cargo in lazarets, fumigation of susceptible articles, &c., which was practised at seaports on account of the plague, in connexion with the Levantine trade. It is now a thing of the past in the United Kingdom and in the majority of other states. But, in common usage, the same word is applied to the sanitary rules and regulations which are the modern substitutes for quarantine. ”

“ On the Staten Island side, a white staff displayed a pale yellow flag, denoting the habitation of the quarantine officer; for as if to symbolize the yellow fever itself, and strike a panic and premonition of the black vomit into every beholder, all quarantines all over the world, taint the air with the streamings of their fever-flag. ”

“ While the intricate and perplexing subjects of quarantine and plague police, will require for their elucidation, the energies of a peculiarly constructed and well disciplined mind, to concentrate the genuine lights into a focus, and to dissipate the many specious, but false appearances, with which the question of contagion has been distorted. ”

“ The code of Quarantine laws in England, and of Sanitary laws in the nations of the continent of Europe, is, perhaps, without exception, the most gigantic, extraordinary, and mischievous superstructure, that has ever been raised by man, upon a purely imaginary foundation. All these codes being in principle similar, I shall here limit my observations to the English regulations of quarantine, and to the Spanish sanitary laws, as affording examples of the whole. ”

“ Thinking of quarantines suddenly brought back the memory of a trip I had taken three years earlier to the Windward and Leeward Islands, where I had been detained in the most comfortable quarantine station in the world—the one at St. Thomas. ”

“ How can I set forth the indignation we all felt to be put in quarantine because of a little insignificant epidemic of fever at D'Urban, in coming to a place noted as a hotbed of every variety of fever? ”

“ This is because he knows that such people still have in their bodies the germs that cause the disease, and that as long as these germs are there they can give the disease to other people. It is not pleasant to have to stay in quarantine when you feel that you are well, and children, as well as older people, are very likely to become restless under the circumstances. You see an illustration of such a patient in Figure 60, where the little girl, who is under quarantine for scarlet fever, but who is feeling quite well, is giving a book to two of her friends. ”

“ But the most careful and stringent quarantine regulations may not be sufficient absolutely to exclude the disease. The progress of medical and sanitary science has been such, however, that if approved precautions are taken at once to put all of our cities and towns in the best sanitary condition, and provision is made for isolating any sporadic cases and for a thorough disinfection, an epidemic can, I am sure, be avoided. ”

“ In order to do this, they have to shut away from other people those who have diphtheria germs; that is, they make the sick ones stay at home until they are free from the germs of the disease. We call this quarantine. Quarantine means that you must stay away from other people when you are sick with a communicable disease, and that other people must stay away from you. People are not put in quarantine because they are sick, but because they are dangerous, and because we are trying to prevent other people from getting the same disease. ”

“ The period of quarantine must be guided largely by the period of incubation, hence the subject is an important one for a variety of reasons. The “Medical Magazine” (London) states that the period of quarantine should be at least a day longer than the maximum period of incubation for each disease. This is a very uncertain rule, however, for the patient should be free from all signs of illness, and especially from fever. ”

“ In the first place, quarantine is established in each village, not only against the inhabitants of the infected village, but against all strangers; no person from outside is allowed to enter. In the second place, a feast is made by the people for one of their idols who goes by the name of Fangeroe wõchõ, or Protector from sickness. ”

“ Do not eat in insanitary restaurants. Eat at home. Should cases be isolated? Should they be quarantined until no longer infective? The experience of the last epidemic has rendered us pessimistic. We have found that isolation and quarantine does little or no good. Institutions which were held under rigid quarantine for the first months of the epidemic were later invaded when discipline became lax. The disease thereafter spread often as extensively as it would have, had there been no delay. ”

“ The waters and the air together proved to be so much a tonic, that we determined to pass a week at Spa, A——, who was so weak on leaving Paris, as scarcely to be able to enter the carriage, gaining strength in a way to delight us all. The cholera and the quarantine together induce a good many people to come this way, and though few remain as long as ourselves, the constant arrivals serve to keep attention alive. ”

“ But, on the other hand, there is record of some institutions in which the quarantine lasted throughout the epidemic and in which the inmates never became ill. All of our past experience with infectious diseases leads us to believe that isolation of cases should be enforced. ”

“ It is considered so certain that everyone exposed to yellow fever will have the disease that proof that a man has lived in an endemic center for ten years is accepted as proof of his immunity. No quarantine is, however, absolute in any disease, in any locality, or carried out by any authority. Some people now and then will pass the quarantine who are either so slightly sick that the disease is not recognized, or who developed the disease after they had been released from quarantine. ”

“ It is impossible to secure the absolute honesty and efficiency of every individual in a large body of men charged with the details of any system entailing great personal inconvenience and loss to travellers and merchants. Therefore, if the strength of the quarantine chain is to be measured by that of its weakest link, the chain must be weak indeed, as a very slight knowledge of human nature will lead us to suspect, and a very slight acquaintance with the working of quarantine as ordinarily practised will attest. ”

“ And now that sickness has got such a foot-hold, leprosy has grown cunning, has got into the ballot-box; the lepers outvote the clean; society has resolved itself into a Hospital Committee, and all its laws are quarantine. ”

“ And all this time, while Texas was strenuously claiming freedom from the yellow plague, her emissaries were discovering cases in New Orleans that the local authorities there had somehow carelessly overlooked. The game of quarantine, as played by the health authorities of the far Southern States, and played for money stakes, if you please, is not an edifying spectacle in twentieth century civilization. ”

“ Meantime our merchants, and indeed the whole nation, are filled with astonishment, on discovering that neighbouring states enforce a quarantine against ships from the British dominions, when those states find that cases of disease are reported to them as occurring among us, resembling more or less those which we have so loudly, and I must add prematurely, declared to be transmissible. ”

“ But the least Appearance of any Thing infectious, makes it much greater; for as soon as ever it is known, the sick Person is separated from the others in Quarantine with him, who are obliged to begin again a more rigorous Quarantine; dividing them as much as possible one from the other; which, in Case of another Accident, is to become a Third Quarantine for every one. And the sick Person being assisted with the utmost Caution and Care, the Corpse is buried in Lime. Those that die in the Ship are buried in the same Manner. ”

“ The young man made a gesture, with empty palms outspread, eloquent of rebellion and despair. "Those doctors—those pig English—they have set a quarantine upon us!"
CHAPTER IV A SORRY GUEST
"A quarantine?" said Arlee Beecher, in a perfectly flat little voice.
Again the young man exercised his power of gesture, his dark eyes seeming to plead his own helpless desire to mitigate his words.
"Truly a quarantine. It is tyranny, but what can one do? They will hear nothing—they set their guard and it is finished—bien simple. We are their prisoners." ”

“ Diseases of the body break out here and there in the world at different periods, and other centres of population get warning, and by quarantine and strict sanitary measures, its spread, as in the case of cholera, is checked. ”

“ Quarantine.— Modern systems of land or sea quarantine directed against plague take cognizance of the facts that the incubation period of the disease may extend to ten days, and that plague affects certain of the lower animals as well as man. ”

“ II.—MEASURES FOR PREVENTING THE IMPORTATION OF PESTILENTIAL CONTAGION; OR QUARANTINE AND LAZARETTOS.
"We may as well build a wall to keep out larks, as barracks to keep out plagues." Distinct notions of the Plague, London, 1665. p. 73. "No quarantine has been till now (1720) laid on ships or goods from Turkey, a trade which has been carried on for about 140 years without any ill consequences, which we hoped would have exempted us from this act." Levant Company's Petition to His Majesty in Council, dated 31st. ”

“ I make this remark, because it appears, from some observations of the board of health, appointed at this period, (1805) "to consider and report the measures which it would be proper to adopt, in case the plague or other infectious disease, attended with great mortality, shall pass the barrier of the quarantine, and actually appear amongst us," that they were not ignorant of the existence of the doctrines, which I had published, upon this subject, in 1796, in India, and which had been also republished in America, and in various parts of Europe. ”

“ Muratori, another decided contagionist, applying his observations to Italy, says: no one has produced a true and solid reason why forty days of quarantine should be necessary for expurgation. But, taking it for granted that infection cannot remain above fifteen days, twenty days quarantine is sufficient for persons. As to goods and other things, however highly infected, their expurgation may be completed in twenty-four hours, insomuch that they may be handled with perfect safety. ”

“ Animals with long hair are subject to full quarantine; but short haired ones purged by swimming ashore; feathered animals, by sprinkling with vinegar till wet.
The celebrated Dr. Mead, though an enemy to the cruel mode of abandoning the sick, or treating them with any kind of harshness, was perfectly sensible of the necessity of using every precaution for preventing pestilential contagion from being imported. In his opinion it is not sufficient that ships should perform quarantine, “the only use of this being to observe whether any die among them. ”

“ You are the man; you're in quarantine, anyway." [Pg 107]
Jerry waited for more.
"This afternoon the lorcha will be towed behind the breakwater. She'll be in strict quarantine. You'll be in charge. I'll give you disinfectants and medicines. You'll keep the boat clean, and you'll attend the sick. Whenever somebody tumbles over, run up the yellow flag and we'll come after him as soon as we can. Every morning I'll come around and see how you are getting along." ”

“ One is the national quarantine act of 1893, already referred to, which contains practically the same provisions for interstate as for maritime quarantine. The other is the annual law passed by Congress appropriating an “epidemic fund” which contains a provision that it may be used in aid of State and local boards of health in the enforcement of their quarantine regulations, as well as those of the national service—to be used, however, only against certain specified epidemic diseases, viz., cholera, yellow fever, smallpox, typhus fever and bubonic plague. ”

“ If each of us would honestly help by maintaining quarantine in the case of contagious disease, by observing the rules of the health department in fumigation, by acting upon advice given in case of eyestrain, bad teeth, or adenoids, and most of all by observing the rules of personal hygiene as laid down in this book, the city in which we live would, a generation hence, contain stronger, more prosperous, and more efficient citizens than it does to-day. ”

“ By what process of reasoning persons appointed to inquire into the validity of the doctrine of contagion in the plague, could have arrived at the conclusions, that it is immaterial, or that it is not their business to ascertain whether the effects of quarantine regulations, as the immediate consequence of that doctrine, be to increase or to diminish the sum total of sickness, misery, and mortality, incidental to epidemic diseases; whether the immense sums annually employed for the maintenance of sanitary establishments, at home and in our colonies, be a necessary or a superfluous expenditure ”

“ It is their province to enlighten the public in regard to quarantine regulations,—the location, arrangement, and dietaries of hospitals, asylums, schools, prisons, and similar institutions,—in relation to the medical police of towns, as drainage, ventilation, &c.,—and in regard to measures for the prevention of epidemic and contagious diseases; and when pestilence prevails, it is their duty to face the danger, and to continue their labors for the alleviation of the suffering, even at the jeopardy of their own lives. ”

“ Everybody has heard of Quarantine, but in our favored country there are many untravelled persons who do not precisely know what it is, and who no doubt wonder why it should be such a bugbear to travellers in the Orient. ”