Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 66.djvu/363

Rh ten to fifteen feet between the immigrants. The second doctor, placed about thirty feet from the first, disregards that part of the examination entrusted to his colleague and confines his examination to such defects as are not looked for by the first doctor. The file of immigrants makes a right-angle turn just as it reaches the second doctor and this enables the examiner to observe the side and back of the passenger in the shortest time possible.

The examiners follow a routine in this examination, and the scrutiny begins at the approaching passenger's feet, before he comes within fifteen feet of the examiner. The examiner's scrutiny beginning at the feet travels upward, and the eyes are the last to be inspected. In this way, lameness, deformity, defective eyesight (through efforts to adjust his vision, after making the turn, to a new course) are detected. The gait and general appearance suggest health or disease to the practised eye, and aliens who do not appear normal are turned aside, with those who are palpably defective, and more thoroughly examined later.

The medical examiners must ever be on the alert for deception. The nonchalant individual with an overcoat on his arm is probably concealing an artificial arm; the child strapped to its mother's back, and who appears old enough to walk alone, may be unable to walk because of infantile paralysis; a case of favus may be so skilfully prepared for inspection that close scrutiny is required to detect the evidences of recent cleansing, and a bad case of trachoma may show no external evidence and be detected only upon everting the eyelid.

After the last alien in line has passed the doctor, the suspected ones turned aside are thoroughly examined, idiots and those suffering with a loathsome or dangerous contagious disease are certified and sent to the board of special inquiry. Cases not deemed fit to travel are sent to the hospital, and cases with some disability likely to make them a public charge are certified accordingly and also sent to the board of special inquiry. Minor defects, such as anemia, loss of an eye, loss of a finger, poor physique, low stature, etc., are recorded on the alien's card and he is allowed to go to the registry clerk and immigrant inspector in charge of the manifest, who takes the defect into consideration as contributory evidence, and may or may not send him to the board.

After passing the doctors, the immigrants are grouped, according to the number of their manifest sheet, into lines of thirty or less. At the head of each line is a registry clerk, or interpreter, and an immigration inspector. The clerk, or interpreter, interrogates each alien, and finds his name, and verifies the answers on the manifest sheet before him, and if, in the opinion of the immigrant inspector, the immigrant is not clearly and beyond doubt entitled to land, he is held for the consideration of the board of special inquiry. A board of