The Sun.
London, England, 1846-08-07 00:00:00

QUARAN TINE.

The following is the report of the Academy of Medi-
cine of Paris upon this much-agitated question:—
" We have lately shown how urgent it was becoming
that reforms should be introduced silo the existing sys-
tem of quarantine ; we demonstrated the evil conse-
quences arising out of the maintenance of rigorous
measures, the only effect of which is to create difficulties
in our relations with the East without insuring more
security to public health. England and Austria have
long since freed themselves from this excess of useless
precaution, and experience has justified their temerity.
Consequently, unless we choose wilfully to abandon
the advantages of commerce with the East, it is high
time for us also to modify the rigour of our sanatory
rules now enforced at Marseilles.
" The experience of those two great nations is alone
sufficient to show that the limits of the danger are much
More circumscribed than one would suppose. This im-
portant question has, however, been submitted to the
Academy of Medicine and the Academy of Sciences. Of
these two learned bodies, the latter is more particularly
charged with enlightening Government on all points
where public health is in question, and has already made
its report. That of the Academy of Medicine has just
been delivered, and it does not appear favourable to the
sanatory precautions actually taken in France. An
opinion may be formed on this subject from the follow-
ing extract from it:—
" This important document is the work of a commis •
sion composed of Messrs. Adelon, Begin, Dubois
(d'Amiens), Dupuis, Ferrus, Londe, Malier, Pariset,
Poisenille, Royer-Collard, et Prus (reporter). The re-
port is divided into four parts:—The first refers to
countries in which the plague has arisen or still arises
spontaneously. The second !elates to its epidemic or
sporadic character, and to the manner in which it pro-
pagates itself. The third treats of the transmissibility
of the disease. In the fourth and last part, the object
of the Commission was to inquire what is the common
or exceptional time for the incubation of the plague.
Then are introduced the applications that may be made
to the question of quarantine.
" What definition is to be given of the plague?—lt is a
disease of the whole organisation, in which the nervous
and lymphatic systems, as well as that of circulation, are
principallyaffected, and which is commonly characterised
externally by buboes, carbuncles, and petechim. From
the numerous documents consulted by M. Prus, the
plague thus defined has arisen spontaneously at different
times, not only in Egypt, Syria, and Turkey, but also in
a great number of other parts of Africa, Asia, and
Europe. At the present moment it is almost exclusively
from Egypt that we have to fear the importation of that
disease. But if in the view of health we compare the
different points of the globe acknowledged to give birth
to the plague, we are amazed to see in Egypt, in spite of
its fine climate, a miserable population inhabiting villages
composed of filthy huts, unfit for human beings, living on
spoiled seeds, unsound meat, and putrid fish ; we are
surprised to see even the towns—even Cairo—encum-
bered with cemeteries, and composed of houses built ou
sepulchral caves, where dead bodies lie mouldering. The
same circumstances are to be met with at Erzeroum, a
large town, having 50,000 inhabitants, built in a penin-
sula formed by the two northern sources of the Eu-
phrates. This city, where the plague arises spon-
taneously, is traversed by filthy streets; dead animals lie
in them unheeded ; every description of filth is thrown
into them ; the butchers kill animals in these streets,
which are, in short, as unhealthy as they can possibly
be. The population of it are, generally speaking, very
poor.
" The same poverty is to be met with likewise on the
banks of the Danube, and the want of rapidity in the
curreijt of that river produces the same effects as do
marshes. On its banks the diseases, which are frequent
in all seasons, frequently assume, after hot weather, a
remarkably serious aspect. In the autumn of almost
every year very dangerous intermittent fevers appear,
and are soon followed by the plague, which is generally
sporadic, but which in some years assumes the epidemic
form. It is thus ascertained that in all countries where
this disease has been observed to be spontaneous, it
may reasonably be considered as arising from deter-
mined causes acting on a great portion of the population;
these causes are, living on a marshy soil near the Medi-
terranean sea, near certain rivers—the Nile, the Eu-
phrates, or the Danube ; living in houses that are low,
not well ventilated, and where there exists supera-
bundant accumulation of inhabitants ; hot and damp
air ; the action of animal and vegetable substances in a
state of decomposition ; and, lastly, great moral and
bodily misery.
" All these generating causes being united every
year in Lower Egypt, the disease is endemic in that
country, where it is observed to assume the sporadic
form every year, and the epidemic about every ten
years. Besides, if we consult history, we shall find that
during the reign of the last of the Pharaohs, during the
194 years of the occupation of Egypt by the Persians,
the 301 years during which lasted the dominion of
Alexander, the dynasty of Ptolemus, and a great por-
tion of that of Rome, Egypt was free from the plague.
This absence of any epidemic for the long space of time
during which good administration and the sanitory
police of the country conquered the producing causes of
the plague, justifies the expectation that the same means
will be followed by the same results.
" Epidemics of the plague have appeared in Syria, in
Turkey, in the regencies of Tripoli and Tunis, in Mo-
rocco and Algiers. Algiers being excepted, it may be
said that these countries having remained in the same
state in which they were when the plague broke out,
there is no reason for thinking that similar epidemics
may not do so again. Algiers forms an exception, be-
cause the Arabs and the Kabies living, the first under
tents, the second in abodes placed on the tops or sides
of mountains, cannot give birth to the disease ; and
also because that several marshy parts of that country
have been made more healthy, and the truly remarkable
improvements introduced into the construction and
police of the small number of existing towns there
seems to be a sufficient security against spontaneous
epidemics of the plague. From this statement (which
is a summary of the first part of the work of the com-
mission), we may draw this important conclusion—that
the progress of civilisation and a constant and general
application of the laws of hygiene can alone furnish us
with the means of preventing the outbreak of sponta-
neous plague. Let us now pass on to the second part.
" Is the plague an epidemic disease, according to the
sense of this word ?
" A disease is epidemic when, in a given time, it at-
tacks a great number of persons. Epidemic diseases
present characters by which they may be distinguished
from those that are not so. 1. There is a special march
in their progress. Three periods are generally admitted
—the commencing, the confirmed, and the declining or
ending period. These often display neither the same
symptoms, the same alterations, nor the same gravity.
2. During the reign of an epidemic disease other dis-
tempers are less frequent, and bear the stamp of the
predominant affection. 3. Whilst an epidemic disease
is raging, it seldom occurs that the persons who retain
their health do not feel, more or less, the general in-
fluence. 4. Epidemic diseases often return and disap-
pear in the same season, and last generally the same
length of time. 5. An epidemic disease is often pre-
ceded by other affections, offering various degrees of
gravity, which are more or less general, and seem as it
were its precursors.
" All these characters having been observed in the
plauge when it has raged with violence in Africa, Asia,
and Europe, it ought, under these circumstances, to be
considered as an epidemic disease.
But sometimes, in countries where the plague arises
spontaneously, it attacks a small number of separate
individuals; it is then termed sporadic, and is wanting
in the characters belonging to epidemic diseases.
" The plague, the influence of those labouring under
the disease being put aside, is propagated in the same
manner as the generality of epidemic diseases—that is to
say, by the action of general causes.
" After this follows, in the third part, an inquiry into
the important but difficult question of the transmissibility
of the plague, both within and without the epidemic focus.
"Is the plague transmissible by inoculation? Is it
transmissible in and out of the focus of the epidemic by
immediate contact of those that are infected, by that of
their garments, of goods, and by the miasmata exhale d
by the persons infected, and which are conveyed by the
air?

" The following are the answers to all these questions,
such as they flow, with so much order and lucidity, from
the conscientious and profound discussion established in
M. T'rus's report.
" The inoculation of blood drawn from the vein of an
infected person, or the pus taken from a bubo, only gave
equivocal results; the same attempt made with serosity
taken from the plycterim of a carbuncle of the same na-
ture, always failed to give the plague. It is consequently
not proved that the plague can be transmitted by inocu-
lation, even within the focus of the epidemic.
" A severe and attentive examination of the facts of
which medical science is posssessed, establishes, on one
hand, that in the Ifocus of the epidemic the immediate
contact of infected persons by thousands proved to have
no ill effect on those that were exposed to it in the open
air or in well ventilated places; on the other hand, that
the possibility of disease being transmitted by the simple
contact of persons infected is not demonstrated by any
rigorous observation.

--""
A great number of facts prove that clothes baying
belonged to infected persons did not communicate the
plague to those who made use of them without any pre-
vious purification in a country actually or recently sub-
mitted to a pestilential constitution. The facts which
seem to have offered a contrary solution, can only be-
come of any value by being confirmed by new observa-
tions made without the epidemic focuses, far from those
of miasmatic infection, and from countries where the pest
is endemic.
"The transmissibility cf the plague by goods, in coon_
trieswhere the distemper is endemic or epidemic, is by no

means proved.
"Within the focus of the epidemic, the plague is trans-
missible by means of the miasmata arising from infected

persons.
" The pest is indubitably transmissible without the
epidemic focuses, in ships at sea, or in the lazarettoes of
Europe.
"Nothing proves that the plague is transmissibls
without the epidemic focus by the immediate contact of
those who are infected.

"It is not established that the pest is transmissible out
of the epidemic focus by clothes that have been used by
persons infected.
"It is in no manner certain that goods can convey the
plague out of the epidemic focus.
" The classification existing in our lazarettoes for ob•
jects liable and not liable is not grounded on any facts •r
experiments worthy of credit.

The investigation into the proper means of disin-
fecting clothes and goods has not yet been achieved. To
make it rational it would be necessary that it should be
preceded by the proof that these objects can be impreg-
nated with the principle of the plague.

" Tile plague may be conveyed out of the epidemic
focuses by miasmatic infection—that is to say, by air