[27]. In January, 1866, the members of the Aberdeenshire Cattle Plague Association being much interested in the question as to how the disease could possibly have reached Pitmillan, Fovernan, no suspicious communication by beast or otherwise having taken place with the farm for weeks, Mr Hay, veterinary surgeon, inspector for the county, gave the following explanation of the matter in a letter to Mr Barclay, the hon. secretary:—“I am happy to be able to satisfy the public mind as to how the disease was brought to Pitmillan. About Christmas Mr Fraser got from Mr Duncan, flesher, Aberdeen, a quantity of beef rolled up in packsheet, which had apparently paid several visits to London round carcases, and doubtless mingled there with many of its kind from various places of the kingdom. After being removed from the beef at Pitmillan, this packsheet was thrown aside for some time, when one of the servant girls took and used it (unwashed) as an apron for a considerable period before the first cow got bad, and was carrying the kail in it to the cow after she was taken ill. You see by this that we are liable to get the disease at any time. Tons of packsheet return weekly by railway, and no surer agent could be employed to bring rinderpest to the country.” The secretary having some doubt about the guilt of the packsheet (which however, was gravely accused in both Houses of Parliament), reported his opinion that the contagion was conveyed by the wind! [Ed.]
If indeed the emanations thrown off from the living body formed permanent and powerful poisons, like miasms connected with the products of decomposition, and if they were, like such products, capable of being conveyed unchanged to great distances, we should be able to live only in solitude; we could never meet in society, for we should poison each other; the first symptom of illness would be the signal for the abandonment of the sick, and we should be compelled by a due regard to self-preservation to withhold from persons afflicted with disease every kind and degree of assistance that required personal attendance.
Happily, we are not so constituted, and the evidence that has been adduced of the narrowness of the sphere even of the most virulent contagion, shows the groundlessness of the alarm sometimes entertained respecting this dreaded agent, while it points to the certain means of destroying it. The London Fever Hospital is separated from the Small-Pox Hospital only by the space of between thirty and forty feet, and the windows of the wards of both establishments are immediately opposite each other: yet there is no instance of the communication of small-pox to the typhus patients, nor of typhus to the small-pox patients; nor of either disease to the convalescent, or to the official inmates of the adjoining establishment. There does not appear to be a single instance on record, in any country, of the extension of infection beyond the walls of an hospital, or even of a lazar-house, so as to injure in any manner the nearest inhabitants.
But though it appears that modern experience and research have shed considerable light on the origin and progress of epidemic diseases, yet there are still some circumstances connected with their propagation which the present state of our knowledge does not enable us to understand, and which therefore appear to us as difficulties.
These cases are sometimes termed exceptional; but they are only apparent, not real, exceptions; as in all other departments of human research, they are merely indications of the imperfection of our knowledge, and advancing science will unquestionably one day so elucidate these very exceptions, as to render them additional confirmations of the true conditions.
In the present state of popular opinion it has been deemed requisite to enter into this detailed consideration of the general subject of contagion, because it appears that in proportion as undue weight is attached to this dreaded agent the effect is mischievous; since, “it diverts attention from the true source of danger, and the real means of protection, and fixes it on those which are imaginary; creates panic; leads to the neglect and abandonment of the sick; occasions great expense for what is worse than useless; and withdraws attention from that brief but important interval between the commencement and the development of disease, during which remedial measures are most effective in its cure.”
It is also necessary to examine the questions of contagion and quarantine apart from each other, because there are points of obscurity, and therefore grounds for controversy, which, in the present state of our knowledge, may be reasonably considered as belonging to the former, that do not attach to the latter. The inquiry with reference to quarantine, indeed, is simple, and lies in a narrow compass. The sole question to be determined is, whether or not it accomplishes, or is capable of accomplishing, its professed object, and this is a mere question of evidence and experience.
The object of quarantine is to prevent the introduction of epidemic diseases from one country into another, and the agency which it employs for this purpose is the isolation of the sick; the detention of, and the placing under inspection for a given period, persons who come from an infected country or district, though they may not be actually sick; and the purification of articles of commerce presumed to be capable of imbibing and conveying pestilential virus, before such articles are landed and dispersed.
It appears that facts and observations place beyond all reasonable doubt the utter inutility of this system.
If there be any truth in the preceding representation, that epidemic diseases are universally and inseparably connected with an epidemic atmosphere, the question is at once decided. Quarantine can exercise no more control over this epidemic atmosphere than over the electricity and temperature of the common atmosphere, and the direction and force of the wind.