The Sun.
London, England, 1847-07-14 00:00:00

Otrienin4

LONDON, WEDNESDAY, JULY 14, 1847.

A subject of considerable importance, both to the
mother country and the colonies, was last evening
brought incidentally under the consideration of the
House of Commons. Lord JOHN MANNERS inquired
whether the Government was prepared to make due
arrangements for the prevention, or, at least, for the
diminution, of those contagious maladies by which
the mortality on board the emigrant vessels was so
grievously increased. In default of a comprehensive
measure of sanatory improvement, applicable to all
classes of the community, whether resident or other-
wise, we axe satisfied that there is no individual
grievance which more imperatively demands the in-
terference of the Executive than that by which
disease is permitted to decimate the unfortunate
voyagers in the ships of emigration during the period
of their transit across the Pacific or the Atlantic.
We fully appreciate the benefit resulting from the
regulation mentioned by Mr. llawss, that no eu' •
rant ship is permitted to sail if contagious diseases
manifested themselves among the passengers. As a
precautionary arrangement, that is undoubtedly most
excellent, but common sense and the smallest possible
amount of experience proclaim that it is altogether in-
sufficient. Corporeal ailments lurk so repeatedly in the
constitutions of those who hare travelled from
inland localities for the purpose of undertaking
a- trans-marine journey, their incipient maladies
are so frequently retarded for a while by the reviving
end invigorating influences of the sea-breezes on
reaching the coast, and diseases are so continually
delayed in their manifestation until the voyage with
all its inconveniences has been commenced and
suffered, that it were frivolous to regard the sanatory
precaution
Just alluded to as in any measure propor-
tioned to the risks of contagion, and the average ex-
tent of mortality on the
ocean.s
The dit:flculty of providing
medical practitioner oinpelt3echtor seven hundred
medical practi-
Con ers—periodicall v+ - f reOr the servation of the
health of the emigrants duringp their passage from
England to the land of their destination,t reflection
appears
without doubt enormous, and on the
firs
almost insurmountable. An economical dispositionv
.
of the surgeons selected for this marine service
might very materially diminish the obstacles to the
humane intentions of Government, and preserve the
lives of many hundreds of our fellow-country-
men annually, with a comparatively insignifi-
The evil, be it remembered,
cant expenditure.
which has to be surmounted is twofold, namely, a
deplorable mortality aboard ship, and the perpetual
introduction of contagious maladies into the British
Colonies and the United States, with every fresh
arrival of emigrants from Great Britain. Both these
calamities might be visibly diminished in rigour, if
they might not actually in a great measure be
prevented, and this not so much from a costly and
elaborate employment of the remedies afforded by
the Pharmacopoeia, a, by a simple and inexpen-
sive.- iiatxoduction of cleanline s
,0-iii-earen hundred vessels s
used annually as
and method into
ildiet.etagrpejabation.undanTheee
The insufficiency of
of
timid
e otity of these vessels
circumstancesare- dirt
n
mtaertir calculated to breed malaria
' rad ths fsesbness of a salm. e atmoesvpehnerien, the
f

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