Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 20.djvu/170

Rh 158 Q U A Q U A England of a thorough-going resort to quarantine restrictions. The pestilence invaded every country of Europe despite all efforts to keep it out. In England the experiment of hermetically sealing the ports was not seriously tried when cholera returned in 1849, 1853, and 1865-66. In 1847 the Privy Council ordered all arrivals with clean bills from the Black Sea and the Levant to be admitted to free pratique, provided there had been no case of plague during the voyage ; and therewith the last remnant of the once formidable quarantine practice against plague may be said to have disappeared. The quarantine establishment fell gradually into disuse, and is now represented by a hulk at the Motherbank (Portsmouth), which is kept up solely for formal reasons. For a number of years after the passing of the first Quarantine Act (1710) the protective practices were of the most haphazard and arbitrary kind. In 1721 two vessels laden with cotton goods, &.C., from Cyprus, then a seat of plague, were ordered to be burned with their cargoes, the owners receiving 23,935 as indemnity. By the clause in the Levant Trade Act of 1752 vessels for the United Kingdom with a foul bill (i. c., coming from a country where S'ague existed) had to repair to the lazaretto of Malta, Venice, essina, Leghorn, Genoa, or Marseilles, to perform their quarantine or to have their cargoes " sufficiently opened and aired. " Since 1741 Stangate Creek (on the Medway) had been made the quarantine station at home ; but it would appear from the above clause that it was available only for vessels with clean bills. In 1755 lazarets in the form of floating hulks were established in England for the first time, the cleansing of cargo (particularly by exposure to dews) having been done previously on the ship's deck. There was no medical inspection employed, but the whole routine left to the officers of customs and quarantine. In 1780, when plague was in Poland, even vessels with grain from the Baltic had to lie forty days in quarantine, and unpack and air the sacks ; but owing to remonstrances, which came chiefly from Edinburgh and Leith, grain was from that date declared to be a " non-susceptible article." About 1788 an order of council required every ship liable to quar- antine, in case of meeting any vessel at sea, or within four leagues of the coast of Great Britain or Ireland, to hoist a yellow flag in the day time and show a light at the maintopmast head at night, under a penalty of 200. After 1800 ships from plague-countries (or with foul bills) were enabled to perform their quarantine on arrival in the Medway instead of taking a Mediterranean port on the way for that purpose ; and about the same time an extensive lazaret was built on Chetney Hill near Chatham at an expense of 170,000, which was almost at once condemned owing to its marshy foundations, and the materials sold for 15,000. The use of float- ing hulks as lazarets continued as before. In 1800 two ships with hides from Mogador (Morocco) were ordered to be sunk with their cargoes at the Nore, the owners receiving 15,000. About this period it was merchandise that was chiefly suspected : there was a long schedule of "susceptible articles," and these were first exposed on the ship's deck for twenty-one days or less (six days for each instalment of the cargo), and then transported to the lazaret, where they were opened and aired forty days more. The whole detention of the vessel was from sixty to sixty-five days, including the time for reshipment of her cargo. Pilots had to pass fifteen days on board a "convalescent ship." The expenses may be esti- mated from one or tvo examples. In 1820 the "Asia," 763 tons, arrived in the Medway with a foul bill from Alexandria, laden with linseed ; her freight was 1475 and her quarantine dues 610. The same year the "Pilato," 495 tons, making the same voyage, paid 200 quarantine dues on a freight of 1060. In 1823 the "William Parker" from Alexandria paid 188, or 5 per cent, on the value of her cargo. In 1823 the expenses of the quarantine service (at various ports) were 26,090, and the dues paid by shipping (nearly all with clean bills) 22,000 ; in 1824 the figures were respectively 23,704 and 14,419. A parliamentary return moved for by Mr Forster showed the expenses of the quaran- tine establishments at Rochester, Portsmouth, Bristol, Milford, Liverpool, and Bo'ness for the year ending 6th January 1846 to be 15,590. A return for the United Kingdom and colonies moved for by Mr Joseph Hume in 1849 showed, among other details, that the expenses of the lazaret at Malta for ten years from 1839 to 1848 had been 53,553. Under the direction of Sir W. Pym, the superintendent-general of quarantine, the home establishments were gradually reduced from 1846 onwards ; and the reports of the Board of Health (signed by Chadwick, South- wood Smith, and others) in 1849 and 1852, which argued against quarantine, although not always on sound epidemiological prin- ciples, gave a further impetus in the same direction. The most recent appeal to the quarantine law (at Swansea in 1865) has been referred to above. Literature. The moat considerable treatise on quarantine is the article (pp. 166) by Le"on Colin in the Diet. Encyl. (let Sc. Afed., 3d section, vol. I., Paris, 1874 (with a bibliography). There is also a general article by Reincke in Eulenburg's Handbuch de Getundheitstresen. A quarantine committee of the Social Science Association collected, in 1860-61, valuable consular returns on the practice of quarantine in all parts of the world ; these were edited by Milroy and ordered to be printed (with the report and summary) as three parliamentary papers com- municated to the board of trade. The third paper (6th August 1861, No. 544) contains, in an appendix, an Historical Sketch of Quarantine Legislation and Practice in Great Britain, by Dr Milroy, from which the above historical notes have been largely taken. See also Sheraton Baker, Law of Quarantine, I .on. i., 1873. Russell's Treatise of the Plague (4to, London, 1791) contains "remarks on quarantines, lazarcttoes, <kc.," and an account of the mode of "shutting up" practised by households in Aleppo on the outbreak of plague in the town. On plague-quarantines, see also Hirsch, in the Vierteljahrstchrfur Oeffentl. Gesundheitspftege, 1880, xii. 6. The inexpediency of quarantine in the United Kingdom is discussed by John Simon in the eighth Report of the Medical Officer of the Privy Council for 1865, p. 35. The fifth Report (new series), 1876, contains an abstract by Seaton of Proceedings of the International Sanitary Con- ference at Vienna, 1874. (C. C.) QUARANTINE, CATTLE. The importation of foreign cattle into England was forbidden at a comparatively early period. Thus 18 Car. II. c. 2 made such importa- tion a- common nuisance. In 1869 previous legislation was consolidated by the Contagious Diseases (Animals) Act, 1869, which applied to the United Kingdom. In 1878 this Act was repealed and new provisions made by the Contagious Diseases (Animals) Act, 1878, amended by two Acts passed in 1884. By this Act the privy council is empowered to make from time to time such general or special orders as they think fit for prohibiting the landing of animals brought from a foreign country. Foreign animals can be landed only at certain ports named by the privy council, and must be slaughtered on landing, unless they are intended for exhibition or other exceptional purposes, in which case they are subject to the quarantine rules given in the fifth schedule of the Act. In the United States the importation of neat cattle is forbidden by the Act of 1883, c. 121, except as allowed by the secretary of the treasury. The appropriation Acts since 1881 have made annual grants of sums of $50,000 to enable the secretary of the treasury to cooperate with State and municipal authorities in making regulations for the establishment of cattle quarantine stations. The cattle quarantine system of Canada is said to be one of the most perfect existing. In 1876 a quarantine of eight days was established, raised to ninety days in 1879. The chief Canadian Act is 42 Viet. c. 23. The effect of the Canadian precautions has been that English orders in council have allowed Canadian cattle to be imported into the United Kingdom for breeding and exhibition purposes. QUARANTINE, WIDOW'S, is the right of a widow to remain in the principal house belonging to her husband for forty days after his death. It is specially recognized in Magna Carta and in some of the State laws in the United States. QUARE IMPEDIT, in English law, is a form of action by which the right of presentation to a benefice is tried. It is so called from the words of the writ formerly in use which directed the sheriff to command the person disturb- ing the possession to permit the plaintiff to present a fit person, or to show cause " why he hinders " the plaintiff in his right. The action is one of the few surviving real actions preserved by 3 & 4 Will. IV. c. 27. As a real action it could before the Judicature Acts have been brought only in the Court of Common Pleas. The effect of recent legislation has been to assimilate proceedings in quare impedit as far as. possible to those in an ordinary action. It is now usually brought against a bishop to try the legality of his refusal to institute a particular clerk. The bishop must fully state upon the pleadings the grounds on which he refuses. Quare impedit is peculiarly the remedy of the patron ; the remedy of the clerk is the proceeding called duplex querela in the ecclesiastical court. At common law no damages or costs were recoverable in quare impedit ; 13 Edw. I. st. 1, c. 5, provided for damages up to two years' value of the benefice, and 4 & 5 Will. IV. c. 39 for costs. The action is not barred till the expira- tion of sixty years, or of three successive incumbencies adverse to the plaintiff's right, whichever period be the longer (3 & 4 Will. IV. c. 27, 29). Where the patron of a benefice is a Roman Catholic, one of the universities