The daily Cairo bulletin. (Cairo, Ill.) 1878-1???, 1882-04-22

are very Olu iyruhhy III 'ho i"io'e VI"
ldegencracy in the people OF Older govern
ments have lei slip their obedience to Law
whether moral or physical, 1t is to b'
seen whether in the far future, when the
enlightened governments of the world have
reached their acme. they will, from high
morality and fine physique, lapse rapidli
into anarchy and physical degeneration
Whatever of genuine vitality this grea
valley can infuse into the cause of hu
mainly this council must do its share.
1t is too late in the centuries to discuss
the value of quarantine. I'd as soon assault
the multiplication table or the revolution
of the earth, aud yet there are persons bolc
enough to attack and deny and repre-
sent all these things, Sydney Smith says
| that he has known hian to speak disre
! specially of the equator and | know an old
Kentucky gentleman who insists that a
mile in 9 40 is impossible, and gives as 0
| TeaSOn IlhL INC ulotuiSS 10 w" 6iS"' i"'
the time, and in the face of Maud s. and
| Goldsmith's maid he sticks to it yet. Per
haps, in view of all this we ought not to be
astonished that men in 1882 should claim
that sanitary science should be restricted
by q geographic line.
In discussing the subject of State med
icine and the value of quarantine as an in
strument in state and governmental hands
for the protection of all the people, | took
! occasion to comment upon the propagation
of yellow fever-its local origin and its
general spread.
The subject of quarantine also comes
within the province of state medicine; for
| while domestic diseases are formidable
enough, tremendous mortality comes
from the occasional visitations of foreign
trouble. Thus it not only becomes us &c
labor with all energy toward the best home
surroundings, but aim also to arrest and
hold at bay whatever may threaten US
from abroad. The transportation of dis.
ease by steamship and by railroad in these
days of constant and rapid commercial III
tercourse is felt to be source of real
danger, and sanatarians appeal to govern
ments and governments answer the appeal
by quarantine against everything which
can transport germ.
There are conflicting opinions as 10 the
communicabiity of this disease whether
il is contagious, whether il is infectious
whether it is communicable from man TO
man in any sense by any process at all, 1t
is claimed by some of our best thinkers
to be purely climatic disease, and that
wherever the necessary cOndito of per-
slstent heat and moisture are found there
you will find yellow fever without resortlng
to the supposed necessity of anS imported
case. can not subscribe TO this doctrine;
the facts rs they are obse 'ed at all points
north of the line where yellow fever is one
of the annual diseases, to my mind, are
against this Theory.
Nor do regard it as contagious. | do
not believe that man communicates it to
man in any direct sense, but hold that
the presence Of case in any given locality,
in Kentucky or Indiana or Ohio or New
York or Philadelphia, is necessary to Its
propagation. How! Thus Heat ard
moisture lOng.continued in any given To-
cality, in Hickman, in Cairo, in Bowling
| Green, at the Nashville depot, have gene
rated condition of things which is eX-
actly the indus in which germ develOpes
it's vitality; and finding its way into hu-
man organization sets up the morbid pro-
cesses we call yellow fover This germI do
not believe to be indigenous; it is import
ed it is TO the already yitiated atmos-
| phere what the match is to combustible
material. In the absence Of the match
there would be no combustion in the alb
sence Of the germ there would be no yell
low fever. This germ may be brought by
the man, by his clothing by the goods
from an infected district, and is borne upon
the air. 1t may traverse wide expanse Of
country and prove innoxious till it strikes
district in which heat and moisture have
already done the work necessary to form
breeding place for this specific poison.
1t is the yeast which may be dropped into
dry meal without setting up any formenta.
ton, but which, dropped into meal with
the requisit heat and moisture, at once
brings into action force which could not
be envelopcd from the minutest mixture
with the dryer and cooler meal.
say, then, that while yellow fever is not
contagious in the sense Of being commun.
icabe from man to man IN all climates, it's
existence and spread in any northern eli
mate is dependent upon germ imported
I