US Presidency
1897

The Secretary of the Treasury, in the portion of his report relating to the operation of the Marine Hospital Service, calls attention to the defects in the present quarantine laws, and recommends amendments thereto which will give the Treasury Department the requisite authority to prevent the invasion of epidemic diseases from foreign countries, and in times of emergency, like that of the past summer, will add to the efficiency of the sanitary measures for the protection of the people, and at the same time prevent unnecessary restriction of commerce. I concur in his recommendation. In further effort to prevent the invasion of the United States by yellow fever, the importance of the discovery of the exact cause of the disease, which up to the present time has been undetermined, is obvious, and to this end a systematic bacteriological investigation should be made.