“No person shall, after such detention, land from the ship, and the officer shall forthwith give notice of the detention, and of the cause thereof, to the proper nuisance (local) authority; and the detention shall cease as soon as the nuisance authority shall visit and examine the ship, or at the expiration of twelve hours after notice shall have been given to such nuisance authority.”
Another order in council, dated August 5th, 1871, directs that the master of a vessel, in which cholera has existed, shall not be allowed to bring his vessel into port until he has destroyed the infected clothes and bedding.
Local Government Boards are also invested with considerable executive powers, by which they are enabled to enforce quarantine during the prevalence of any contagious disease in other countries. The main Act, however, relating to quarantine, is the 6th of Geo. IV., c. 78; and all vessels having on board any person or persons affected with a dangerous or infections disorder, are to be deemed as coming within its provisions (see ‘Public Health Act,’ Schedule v., part 3). There is a land, as well as a sea quarantine. Thus, for instance, in some countries, more particularly those of Eastern Europe, the former is still in force on the frontiers of contiguous States, to the great impediment of commerce and inconvenience of travellers.
The late outbreak of plague in Astrakan
has led to its being established and very strictly carried out on the borders of Russia, Austria, Hungary, and Germany.
Hecker, writing on the probable origin of quarantine, remarks:—“The fortieth day, according to the most ancient notions, has always been regarded as the last of ardent diseases, and the limit of separation between these and those which are chronic. It was the custom to subject lying-in women for forty days to a more exact superintendence.
There was a good deal also said in medical works of forty days’ epochs in the formation of the fœtus, not to mention that the alchemists always expected more durable revolutions in forty days, which period they called the philosophical month. This period being generally held to prevail in natural processes, it appeared reasonable to assume and reasonably to establish it; as that required for the development of latent principles of contagion, since public regulations cannot dispense with decisions of this kind, even though they should not be wholly justified by the nature of the case. Great stress has also been laid on theological and legal grounds, which were certainly of greater weight in the fifteenth century than in modern times; such as the forty days’ duration of the flood; the forty days’ sojourn of Moses on Mount Sinai; our Saviour’s fast for the same length of time in the wilderness; lastly, what is called the Saxon term, which lasts for forty days.
QUAR′TAN. Occurring every fourth day.
QUARTA′TION. The practice, among assayers, of alloying 1 part of gold with 3 parts of silver, before submitting it to the operation of ‘parting,’ in order that its particles may be too far separated to protect the copper, lead, palladium, silver, or other metals, with which it is contaminated, from the solvent action of the nitric or sulphuric acid, as the case may be. See Assaying.
QUARTZ. Pure native silica. It is an essential constituent of granite and many other rocks. Its crystalline, transparent varieties, are known as rock crystal. See Glass, Powder, &c.