in those two years the inhabitants of Richmond County had violently invaded the State's quarantine reservations, taken patients out of the various contagious disease hospitals and burned the structures to the ground. These attacks were not committed by the rougher element but were instigated by the local board of health and carried out by the leading citizens of Richmond County. They were due to the extension of yellow fever and other contagious diseases beyond the quarantine walls and into the village of Tompkinsville, on whose waterfront, and in whose roadstead lay the quarantined sailing vessels of that day. The local board of health believed the irruption of yellow fever in the town to be due to the commerce between the village and the quarantine station. We now know that it was not human commerce that brought the visitation upon the people of Richmond County, but the mosquitoes, bred in the water barrels and bilges of the pest ships and carried by every easterly gust of wind to the shore, that conveyed to the village the germs of infection and spread death among the people. Plague Brought by Rats Many years later and within easy memory of this very day, when plague threatened the port, science knew little. more with regard to it than did Rameses II, in whose court Moses grew up to lead the Jewish people out of the house of bondage. Consequently, the very suggestion of the approach of plague, with all its black and dreadful memories, with its terrible death-roll in ancient times and in modern times in Eastern countries, caused a condition of hysteria as a result of which ships were emptied of cargo of incalculable value and the cargo destroyed in the lower bay, while the ships with the real carriers of infection scurrying around in their dark holds were allowed to proceed to the docks. We now know that less from human beings and not at all, speaking practically, from cargoes, need we dread a visitation of the plague, but that rats infesting the holds of vessels are the carriers of this scourge from port to port and from them it is communicated to human beings by the rat flea. Consequently, when plague came nearer to this port than it had ever come before, last summer, having established a foothold in Porto Rico, there was no destruction of cargoes but there was vast destruction of rats. In the month of July, 127 ships were fumigated throughout and the bodies of 1,954 rats were recovered and subjected to bacteriological examination in the quarantine laboratory. Altogether, since the first plague was reported in Porto Rico on June 20, five hundred ships have thus been treated. There has been no panic. There has been merely the application of the common sense means of dealing with this scourge which science has indicated to be the proper means. There should be a wide extension of this practice. Civilization now being in possession of knowledge with regard to the plague should stamp it out forever. Semi-Annual Fumigation I hope New York will take the lead in this matter as it has taken it in all matters connected with quarantine. The advisory board of my department has passed upon a suggestion made by me that the steamship companies doing business in New York and through their home offices controlling in most important part the maritime commerce of the world, take steps to drive the rats from its own immediate interests and problems the State can see, and what the State sees it can show to the commerce over which it exercises a beneficient control. I have spoken of the Quarantine of the Port of New York as the first important quarantine in the world's history and truly it was that. Nevertheless, quarantine itself is a very ancient thing. There are records of it here and there-of a Health-Officer-Cardinal in Rome who quarantined against plague in the 17th Century and kept th death toll in the Eternal City down to 14,000 as against 400,000 whom the pest killed in the same period in the nearby city of Naples; of Health Officer clerics who held ships hailing from plague ports off the English coast in the time of Egbert for the regulation forty days. By the way, that was the origin of the term "quarantine." It is the old Italian "quar antina," or "forty days." The ancients. The ancients did not know much about the duration of the incubatory periods of the several contagions, but they were well on the safe side. fectious and contagious as to menace this country with manifestations in epidemic form. To carry out this purpose the Health Officer is furnished with a large and highly-trained organization and an extensive and expensive physical equipment, consisting of a flotilla of boats, of office buildings, detention pavilions, hospitals, laboratories, storerooms and docks, as well as residential quarters for himself and those members of his subordinate organization whose du ties require them to be within instant call at any hour of the day or night. The residence of the Health Officer is situated upon the hill at the quarantine boarding sta tion on the Staten Island shore of New York Bay, just above the Narrows. From this point of vantage he has a complete view of the entrance to the harbor on one side, and the upper bay and the City of New York at the PASSING INSPECTION The quarantine service of New York is under the Health Officer of the Port of New York, an official of the New York State Government. Its purpose is the protection of the public health against the importation of diseases so highly in so, through the wireless telegraph company, with the various ships approaching the port. For its protection the State exercises, through the Health Officer, the police power inherent in every sovereign State, and the provisions of the public health law, under which he administers his office, give him the widest authority for the fulfillment of his important duties. By the statute referred to, all ships entering the port of New York are compelled to fly the yellow flag as they enter the harbor, to proceed to the anchorage designated by the Health Officer, and there await visitation and inspection by him, or his deputies. They may not haul down their yellow flag until he has issued to them a permit to freely communicate with the shore, which permit is known in quarantine parlance all over the world as a pratique slip. Even then, the Health Officer's authority over the ships and their cargo and passengers does not end. He may, when in his judgment circumstances warrant it, order any ship back from her wharf to the quarantine station, or to any anchorage which he may select; may quarantine warehouses containing cargo from such ships; may follow passengers arrived by such ships and cause their arrest and return to his custody. For fear that these powers may not be sufficiently large for the efficient exercisc of his function, the State, by Section 121 of the Public Health Law, declares: "He shall, in the presence of immediate danger, of which he shall be the judge, take the responsibility of applying such additional measures as may be deemed indispensable for the protection of the public health." He has at his command a police force appointed by him, and the police force of the City of New York and the Health Department of the City of New York are directed by law to give him such assistance as he may consider necessary. Violations of his orders and regulations are made the subject of severe penalties. A Great Responsibility The task set for the Health Officer of the Port of New York is one commensurate with the large powers vested in him by law. He is charged with the inspection annually of five thousand vessels entering the harbor from foreign ports, as well as several thousands entering the harbor from domestic ports. The number of persons arriving by these vessels and subjected to personal individual examination, varies from a million to a million and a half annually. The examinations are conducted with the utmost care. Upon the arrival of a vessel. she is boarded by the Health Officer or a deputy, who first examines the ship's hospital and the patients confined therein, and later with the ship's passenger manifest in his hand, musters the immigrants upon the deck and inspects them as they pass in review before him. Some of the big immigrant carriers entering this port carry as many as three thousand souls, and the examination is by no means an easy task. The slightest symptom of one of the quarantinable diseases results in the removal of the passenger or passengers affected, and a bacteriological examination in the laboratory to determine exactly the nature of the malady, or confirm the diagnosis of the boarding officer. The quarantinable diseases specified by the law of the State of New York are yellow fever, plague, cholera, typhus fever and smallpox, and the Health Of ficer is authorized to add to these any infectious disease, the addition of which to the specified maladies may be advisable in his judgment. In accordance with that authorization, in April of this year I added epidemic cerebro-spinal meningitis, a great many of such cases being arrested at the mouth of the harbor on vessels carrying numbers of immigrants and particularly upon vessels from Greek ports. When Suspects are Found The removal of a passenger suffering from a contagious disease, or suspected of having such a disease, entails the removal also of all persons on board the ship who have been exposed to infection. In cases of cholera, or other diseases highly contagious or infectious, this sometimes means the removal of all persons on board the vessel and their examination bacteriologically. Actual sufferers from the disease are treated in the contagious disease hospitals at Swinburne Island in the lower bay, and persons who have been exposed to danger and are merely under observation for the incubatory period of the several diseases, are kept in custody in the large detention pavilions at Hoffman Island. The period of danger having passed without fresh. outbreak among the observation-detentions, they are discharged into the custody of the United States Immigration authorities at Ellis Island, into whose custody also are discharged such immigrants as have recovered from the contagious diseases and may safely mingle with others. For boarding purposes the Health Officer employs three large steam cutters, the "Governor Flower," the "Staten Island" and the "State of New York" and for the transportation of removed pas |