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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



the full quarantine regulations have been satisfied, the health officers 

 of the several states to which the immigrants are bound are notified of 

 the circumstances that they may keep close supervision to detect any 

 later development of the disease. 



Those vessels are placed in quarantine which have had quarantinable 

 disease on board in transit or which the inspecting officer considers to 

 be infected, also vessels arriving during the summer months from 

 tropical American ports, which are not known to be free from yellow 

 fever. Vessels in quarantine may have no direct communication with 

 any person or place outside, and no communication of any nature except 



Immigration Station, Pelican Island, Galveston, Texas. 



under the supervision of the officer in charge. The persons detained 

 from such a vessel are divided into small isolated groups, and inspected 

 twice daily by the physician. No intercourse is allowed between these 

 groups. No convalescents are discharged from quarantine until free 

 from infection, and whenever possible this is determined by bacteriolog- 

 ical examination. 



The United States quarantine regulations provide for inspection of 

 but six diseases, yellow fever, typhus fever, bubonic plague, leprosy, 

 smallpox and cholera. A few facts relative to these will make plain 

 the nature of the special precautions necessary to exclude them. 



Yellow fever is the great sanitary curse of the tropical Americas. 

 It is an acute non-contagious fever of unknown causation. Its extreme 

 fatality is shown by a death rate which varies from 1 to 95 per cent. 

 The causative agent, whatever it may be, is found in the patient's blood 

 and is transferred to others by one agency alone, a certain type of 

 mosquito, Stegomyia fasciata. The area where yellow fever is endemic 

 corresponds exactly with the geographical distribution of the Stegomyia. 

 It was due to the magnificent work of the Army Yellow Fever Commis- 

 sion in Cuba in 1898 that responsibility for the spread of the disease 

 was definitely laid to the role of this mosquito. Too much honor can 

 not be paid to those brave physicians who risked their lives to discover a 



