This Wellestablished fact encourages the hope that an efficient and uniform system of quarantine may in time shut out this disease from our country. It must cross oceans before it can find a lodgment on our shores. It must be conveyed on ships. the particles of a specific poison actively at work or concealedin the clothing. bedding. or other personal luggage of migrants must be entered at some of our ports. The ocean is the great highway. not only of commerce but of this and other destructive diseases. The General Government can and does regulate this commerce. and surely with the assistance of science itean in some measure control this terrible concomitant ofour foreign commercial intercourse. The leading positions here assumed in regard to Asiatic cholera are equally applicable to yellow fever. It may be endemic in some places on our coast. but ninetenths of the medical profession in this country believe that it is always imported. Indeed since 1668. when the disease made its appearance in this country. down to 1877. when a few cases developed themselves in Florida. embracing seven hundred and fortyone appearances of the disease that has spread to two hundred and twentyeight cities and towns. that has extended to twentyeight States in the Union. and that has caused 65.311 deaths countedbesides the innumerable deaths of which no record is madeof all these appearances of this disease. about 45 per cent. are clearly traceable to foreign origin.
Keywords matched
migrants Asiatic