1615 



(2) The issue also provides instructive examples of progress attribut- 

 able to the teaming of scientists and diplomats in extended negotia- 

 tions. When the French Government convened the first international 

 quarantine congress in 1851, each of the 12 participating nations was 

 represented by a medical doctor and a diplomatist. Delegates were 

 left free to vote individually. Although in voting the two groups 

 tended to cancel each other out, with resultant tensions and frustra- 

 tions, the diplomats and doctors were at last able to agree to 137 

 articles on international sanitary regulations. The pattern of one 

 diplomat and one doctor from each country continued during 10 

 international sanitary conferences which followed between 1851 and 

 the end of the century. 



(3) The same example illustrates another point: the essentiality of 

 sustained application of diplomacy among countries as well as in 

 relations between scientists and diplomats. The pairing arrangement 

 would probably have been fruitless if not held to doggedly until the 

 job was done; failure might have discouraged further efforts for years 

 to follow. Adoption of the first international rules required 48 plenary 

 sessions and 6 months of work. What is more important, for the first 

 time diplotnats and doctors from leading nations had met in earnest 

 to discuss common global disease problems. (It was the diplomats 

 rather than the scientists in this instance, in contrast to that of the 

 International Geophysical Year,^" which made the undertaking a 

 success. The scientific community of the time was divided between the 

 sanitarians and the quarantinists. Today, both views are recognized 

 as separately inadequate but complementary elements of a compre- 

 hensive approach to the problem. Arguments over rival scientific 

 theories consumed most of the time of the conference, but the French 

 diplomatic representative who chaired it continued to seek workable 

 solutions, and the diplomats as a group appeared to have had instruc- 

 tions not to yield to either of the extreme scientific positions. The 

 result was successful compromise.) 



How the Issue Developed 



Historically, cycles of pestilence were accepted as a fact of life. 

 There was a series of disease invasions of Europe beginning with the 

 Cliristian era, running on through the fall of Rome, and climaxing 

 in the black death of the 14th century. (They did not end there: the 

 influenza epidemic of 1918-19 took 20 million lives.) In time, the 

 attitude of acceptance yielded to an active search for causes and 

 remedies. 



BEGINNING OF PREVENTIVE MEDICINE 



Preventive medicine began, at least in England, with public demand 

 for corrective measures against recurring epidemics based on the 

 observed association between polluted water and disease. Its first 

 phase, including some aspects of sanitary engineering and public 

 hygiene, was marked by legislative acts like the Great Reform 

 bill of 1832, the Metropolis Water Act of 1852, and the Public Health 

 Act of 1875. 



'"See: U.S. Con?rpss, House, Committee on Foreign Affairs, The Political Legacy of the International 

 Geophysical Year, in the series Science, Technology, and American Diplomacy, prepared for the Subcom- 

 mittee on National Security Policy and Scientific Developments by Harold Bullis, Analyst in Science and 

 Technology, Science Policy Research Division, Congressional Research Service, 1973, vol. I, pp. 293-300. 



