BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTICES.
G-eneral Board of Health. Second Report on Quarantine. Yel-
low Fever. With appendices, presented in both Houses of
Parliament, by command of her Majesty. London, 1852.
8vo. pp. 414.
This is the second of a series of reports, of great practical value
in a sanitary and commercial point of view; the first of which
appeared in 1849, addressed to Parliament, on Quarantine and
Cholera. We are advised that the third Report will contain
the decisions of the International Sanitary Conference which has
just terminated its labors at Paris.
The names of Edwin Chadwick, Esq., and Dr. J. Southwood
Smith, appended to these reports, two of the committee of inves-
tigation, appointed by the Board of Health, are a sufficient
guarantee of the manner in which the commission has been
executed; while the subjects discussed particularly in this second
report, now before us, are of a character that will secure for it a
careful reading, wherever it can be had.
Indeed it is a source of regret, that this deeply interesting doc-
ument had not been issued in a form that would insure for it a
more general circulation, especially in those countries where Yel-
low Fever prevails endemically.
This second report presents to the reader several points of ab-
sorbing interest. While it purports to be an investigation into
the necessity or otherwise of Quarantine laws, it takes hold of
and discusses in a masterly manner the subject of Yellow Fever,
contributing much towards the solution of several questions,
hitherto involved in doubt and obscurity.
The inquiry professes to settle the leading points at issue, viz.,
the non-contagiousness of Yellow Fever, its domestic origin, and
its similarity in type to miasmatic fevers.
The conclusions to which the General Board of Health have
arrived, as set forth in this report, after a close and scientific
investigation of a large amount of evidence, are presented under
fifteen distinct heads, which may be summed up as follows:
That Yellow Fever epidemics may appear in different towns
and remote parts of the same town, under circumstances in which
communication with infected persons is impossible; that they are
usually preceded by sporadic cases, which cases are common
when no epidemic prevails; that they do not spread by any rule
of gradual progression ; that, when the fever is prevalent in a lo-
cality, rigid seclusion affords no security; that the entire removal
from an infected district, often arrests the progress of the epi-
demic ; that, the disease cannot be transmitted from one person
to another in a hospital; that it is local or endemic in its origin,
and those causes which influence its location are removeable, and in
proportion as they are removed so will the fever subside, or ap-
pear in a milder form ; that non-acclimatization is a predisposing
cause for the disease; that there is no evidence to prove that
Yellow Fever has ever been imported; and lastly, that “the means
of protection from Yellow fever are not quarantine restrictions
and sanitary cordons, but sanitary works and operations, hav-
ing for their object the removal and prevention of the several
localizing conditions, and when such permanent works are im-
practicable, the temporary removal, as far as may be possible,
of the population from the infected localities.”
The question, as to the necessity of the present rigid system
of quarantine, as a preventive for the introduction of disease
from abroad, is taken up and thoroughly investigated. The re-
sult of this inquiry is, that they cannot afford any real protection,
and “ that the substitution of Sanitary and Hygiene measures,
for quarantine isolation and restriction, would afford more cer-
tain and effectual protection.”
While we agree in most particulars with the opinions advanced
by the General Board of Health on this subject, and entertain
the most reliable confidence in the adoption of a rigid po-
lice system, for the prevention and spread of disease, and while
we are decidedly in favor of such an entire modification of our
quarantine laws, as will forever remove those arbitrary and op-
pressive features, which, in this enlightened age, ought to be
looked upon by our law makers as alike cruel, unjust and inju-
rious to commerce, inflicting unnecessary inconvenience on pas-
sengers and seamen, “ while they maintain a false security in re-
lation to the means of preventing disease”; we are not altogether
prepared to sanction the propriety of admitting vessels into port
that have come from unhealthy places, or that have had infec-
tious disease on board during the voyage, until they have under-
gone the process of ventilation and purification beyond the limits
of the Port.
In regard to the introduction of small pox, however, which
forms an exception to the system proposed in this report, we
should deem it advisable not only to detain the vessel for purifi-
cation, but also the crew and passengers, or such of them as are
laboring under the disease, until they have recovered.
In the form of an appendix there is an interesting report on
Yellow Fever; by J. Gillkrest, M. D., Inspector General of Army
Hospitals. The reply of Judge Howell to Sir George Murray,
giving the reasons for his opinion (as one of the members of the
Board of Inquiry into the origin of the Yellow Fever epidemic
of 1828 in that Garrison,) that said epidemic had its origin in
Gibralter. Remarks on the Yellow Fever of the West Indies
and coast of Africa, by Dr. A. Browne, founded on statistical
reports of the army and navy, &c., and a notice of the proceed-
ings of a board of Inquiry held at the office of the army medical
department 1849-50, on the nature of Yellow Fever. All of
which are interesting and replete with valuable statistical and
historical information on the subject of Yellow Fever.
Two beautiful engravings of Gibraltar accompany the book, as
•well as the Abstract of a Report, by James Wynne, M, D., on
Epidemic Cholera as it prevailed in the United States in 1849
and ’50—an American work of much merit on the etiology of
that fatal scourge to the world.
W. J.