The New York herald. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1840-1920, 1867-08-30

The HERALD has recorded its protest against
those injudicious attempts to alarm the public
mind that have often proved effeotual in sggra-
waiting, if not creating, the causes Of epidemical
disease. But It has always insisted upon the
indispensableness Of such means Of precaution
as the Board Of Health deserved and received
the credit Of employing last summer. And it
that this same Board Of Health seems to have
been content, this summer, with the laurels
won by fidelity to its duties last year. Not
few Of the precautionary measures to which we
have alluded have been almost utterly neg
lected during the present season. The streets
too many sunken lots have remained full of
stagnant water, and q striking instance of
dilatoriness, to say the least Of It, Is afforded
by the general order, which has only at this
late date been issued by the Superintendent of
the Metropolitan Police, prohibiting the slaugh-
tering and the driving Of cattle at any place in
the city Of New York south of Forty-second
street. Why was this important order so long
delayed! Here, "a In London, the public
health has this year been unusually good
during the wintry spring and the summer; but
the heats and rains Of August have favored tho
unwelcome invasion of tropical diseases, and
very imperfect precautionary measures have
been taken against them We have even had
to chronicle the fact that several indisputable
cases Of yellow fever have broken out among
the crew Of the Italian bark Chiora, which ar
rived about fortnight ago at Greenpoint, and
was permitted to discharge her cargo alongside
the dock at Pratt's yard, NewtOwn creek. A
day or two afterwards two Of her craw were
taken to the City Hospital, it is said, sick with
the yellow fever. Two more have since been
taken i'll with the same contagious disease and
conveyed 10 hospital Three of the cases in ques-
ton were sent, we understand, to the lower
Quarantine. Whose fault is it that the bark
Chiora was thus allowed to endanger the
public health?
Quite lively discussion was excited at a
recent meeting Of the Board of Health by
petition from shipping firm in this city, re-
questing permission to transfer from the Rel
Hook stores to European vessels at our
wharves for transmission to Europe, ten of
four thousand seven hundred bales of cotton
and nineteen bales of wool, just arrived from
Galveston, where the yellow fever is raging.
The question whether uninfected vessels from
infected ports should be guaranteed was de-
bated, and we are sorry to perceive that the
debate degenerated into something too much
like mere dispute between the medical mem
bers Of the Board. Who shll decide when
doctors disagree? Let the doctors indulge in
disputes elsewhere, but at the meetings of the
Board of Health they should deliberate and
act. Commissioner Acton at length terminated
the discussion by offering resolution, which
was adopted, g. that the counsel Of this Board
report to this Board what are the relative juris-
dictions and duties Of the Health Officer and
this Board, as regards quarantine" Surely, It
is high time that any conflict of authority. pre-
judicial to the public health should be ended
at once. And it would be we'll for tho Board
of Health to investigate Immediately the ru-
mored violation of the quarantine laws by the
landing Of no inconsiderable quantities of cot
ton and wool recently arrived from infected
ports. The last weekly letter Of DR.. Harris
offers statistics which, like those of the latest
me dical reports in London, cry out loudly in
favor Of precaution as to food, drink and drain
age. And equal precauiion is requisite against
the importation of disease from infected ports.