Page:Remarks on the British quarantine laws - Maclean - 1823.pdf/16

420 health, of forty-four days, exclusive of probationary days, by which the sum total is from fifty to sixty days. But according to the early contagionists themselves, this ordeal is superfluous: and even Dr. Mead has admitted, that, “if there be no sickness in the ship, he can see no reason why the men should perform quarantine.” (Discourse, p. 77.) And if there be no necessity for the performance of quarantitie, on the part of the persons who have imported goods from Turkey, what can be the necessity that it should be performed by the goods ? If these goods have not been known to propagate sickness among the persons who have taken them on board, and discharged them, how can they reasonably be supposed capable of propagating it ashore, after debarkation?

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." lib. i. c. 12.

If, in Italy, which is less than half the distance from the Levant, twenty days be deemed sufficient quarantine for the expurgation of persons, and twenty-four hours for the purification of goods, I am utterly at a loss to conceive upon what rational grounds, according to their own doctrines, the partisans of contagion can recommend any quarantine to be performed in England, either upon goods or persons. Let it also be recollected that this law was enacted, after an experience of nearly 250 years, from the first intercourse with Turkey, during which, passengers if they desired it, were constantly landed in the first port in the channel, and without any mischief ensuing.

It is the nature of accredited error to increase in force, and to extend in mischievous consequences. "At Marseilles formerly (i. e. from the establishment of quarantine in 1669 to 1720, or for fifty years) passengers, with clean patents, performed a quarantine of five or six days only; but at present (1720) it is prolonged to twenty, and for passengers from Constantinople to twenty-eight days." Traité de la Peste, t. ii. p. 178. It might be difficult to determine whether the quadrupling the period of quarantine generally, or rendering that on passengers from Constantinople longer than on persons coming from other places, be the greatest absurdity. This latter is presuming that contagion increases in strength in proportion to the distance, which it has travelled, or that the contagion of the metropolis is more inveterate than that of the provinces. It would be less irrational to infer that passen-