THE PREVENTION OF THE INTRODUCTION OF INFECTIOUS AND CONTAGIOUS DISEASES.
The chief national quarantine law is that approved February 15, 1893, amended and extended by acts of Congress approved August 12, 1894, March 2, 1901, and June 19, 1906.
Under these acts the maritime quarantine administration has become national, many state stations having been voluntarily surrendered to the Government, others supplanted by the General Government, because of failure to comply with government regulations, and others superseded by direct authority of law.
The diseases excluded from the country by the national quarantine establishment are cholera, yellow fever, smallpox, typhus fever, leprosy and plague.
Some quarantine stations are inspection stations only, but many are large institutions, comprised of hospitals, quarters, barracks for detention of crews and passengers, wharves and disinfecting machinery, and boarding vessels, all requiring good administrative ability on the part of the commanding officer, who must also be expert in the detection of disease.
When a ship from a foreign port arrives off a port of the United States, it is met by a quarantine officer for inspection under the national regulations. Fifty medical officers of the service are engaged in this work at forty-seven separate stations, extending along the Pacific, the Gulf and Atlantic coasts from Alaska to Portland, Me. Without the quarantine certificates given these officers and the bill of health obtained at the foreign port, the ship would not be allowed entry by the collector of customs and without his permit it would be unlawful for the ship to unload its cargo.
At a few ports, not more than three or four in number, this inspection is made by a State quarantine officer, a relic of the system which prevailed prior to 1893, when quarantine was considered a State rather than a National function. They are obliged, however, to enforce the National regulations, and are subject to inspection by the Federal officers, and if they fail or refuse to comply with the United States regulations the President is authorized to detail an officer of the Government for that purpose.
In addition to the diseases remanded by quarantine, others are excluded under laws relating to immigration, and for this purpose at the principal ports of entry there are also stationed seventy medical officers, who, during the past year, for example, examined more than 1,280,000 immigrants, certifying more than 30,000 of them on account of physical and mental defects. The immigration laws exclude persons afflicted with any loathsome or any dangerous contagious disease, or having mental or physical defects which may affect their ability to earn a living.
Humanity requires the treatment in hospital of immigrants arriving sick with ordinary as well as prohibitive diseases, and the large hospitals connected with the stations are under the professional conduct of service officers.
Although the immigration stations are under the control of commissioners attached to the Department of Commerce and Labor, nevertheless the medical officers are subject in their professional work to supervision by the Public Health Service, and their instructions as to the medical inspection of aliens are prepared by the Surgeon-General and approved by the Secretary of the Treasury.