Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume XIV.djvu/136

 128 QUARANTINE was not afflicted with plague while her com- merce was limited or when it was dulled by the rivalries of the orientals; but when she had become strong enough to undertake con- quests, when she covered the Mediterranean with her ships, and made commerce and war at the same time, she was invaded by a suc- cession of plagues which originated in the Levant. In six centuries (from 901 to 1500) she had 63 epidemics. The Venetian senate in 1448 enacted a digest of laws known as the laws of quarantine. This system obliged all ships and individuals arriving from suspected places to undergo a terra of probation before entering port and discharging their cargoes. The first organized lazaretto or pest house was erected in 1453 on the island of Sardinia, sub- sequently called il lazaretto vecchio ; another was erected in 1468, called il lazaretto nuovo. All persons arriving from places where the existence of plague was suspected were de- tained there. The sick from the city laboring under the disease were sent with their families to the former station, and when cured were kept still 40 days longer in the latter. At a later period the republic of Venice established the first board of health, consisting of three nobles, who were appointed by the grand coun- cil. They were called the council of health, and were ordered to investigate the best means for preserving health and for preventing the introduction of disease from abroad. The ef- forts of this council not being entirely suc- cessful, in 1504 they were invested with the power of life and death over those who vio- lated the regulations for health, and there was no appeal from their sentence. During the prevalence of plague in Italy about 1527 bills of health were first introduced, and in 1605 they had become general. Quarantines and lazarettos began to multiply along the shores of the Adriatic, and other nations established similar laws. Though certain preventive regu- lations had existed in England from a very early period, no regular system of quarantine was enforced until about 1710, when plague was raging in the towns on the Baltic. Du- ring the dreadful plague at Marseilles in 1720 the government appointed the celebrated Dr. Richard Mead to draw up quarantine regula- tions. Parliament, approving his suggestions, repealed the act of 1710, and passed an act establishing quarantine throughout the com- mercial kingdom. Yellow fever visited Phila- delphia in 1699, and in 1700 the general assem- bly enacted the first quarantine law in this country, imposing a fine of 100 for every un- healthy vessel that landed. In 1701 a health law partly quarantine was enacted in Massachusetts. The first law on the subject in New York was passed by the colonial legislature in 1758. Con- gress passed "an act respecting quarantines and health laws," approved Feb. 25, 1799, which still stands upon the statutes. In 1831 cholera rode over all quarantine restraints; and these barriers being deemed antiquated, reforms were suggested. On Aug. 18, 1847, a royal ordinance of France declared the first recognition of the truth, based upon the opin- ions of medical men, that many of the restric- tions of quarantine were unnecessarily burden- some, and therefore they were abolished. Still other reforms were established by decrees of Aug. 10, 1849, and Dec. 24, 1850. Dupeyron suggested the idea of a sanitary congress. A convention of delegates from the principal countries in Europe met in Paris in 1851, and after a long discussion proposed an interna- tional code of quarantine laws, which was rati- fied by the nations represented. On the ap- proach of cholera in 1865 the French gov- ernment called an international sanitary con- ference at Constantinople. Since this discus- sion quarantine has been established on a sci- entific basis, and more in accordance with mod- ern notions of liberty and justice. Reviewing the history of quarantine, several periods may be distinguished. At first people, seized with terror, became panic-stricken ; they wanted to be protected at any price. During this first period of superstition and terror, plague- stricken cities were burned ; the sick were left alone to die; the shipwrecked from a suspected port were refused assistance; and physicians, afraid to appproach their patients, threw bis- touries at them from a distance in order to open their buboes. The second may be called the period of reaction. The atmosphere was considered as the vehicle of epidemics, and was supposed to transmit diseases to a great dis- tance. Going to the opposite extreme, quaran- tines were declared useless. The cholera of 1830 furnished new arms to the adversaries of restrictive measures. The severe quarantines and cordons organized on a vast scale in Rus- sia and Prussia, and other parts of central Eu- rope, applied in the midst of dense populations, became mere propagating agents. With the conference of Constantinople the question en- ters on the third or scientific period, when the true principles of international hygiene became established. Why the term of 40 days was fixed upon as a proof whether people were infected, is not very clear. Some say it was chosen merely from superstitious notions, be- cause people were accustomed to it in Lent ; others that it arose from the doctrine of physi- cians in regard to the critical days of many dis- eases. Communication with a country where a contagious disease exists may be interdict- ed by lines of troops or detachments posted from place to place. Some happy results may be cited in favor of these sanitary cordons applied at an opportune time and rigorously observed. Forts and villages in Orenburg and Astrakhan have been preserved from cholera by this means, as well as other towns in Russia, and also in Palestine and Arabia. The original lazaretto at Venice was the model for most of those forming part of the quarantine estab- ment in nearly all European ports. The old lazarettos are more dangerous than useful ;