690 



and dispersion can dissipate any contagion." ^ This notion continued 

 for at least another 30 years, as can be seen in the Governor of Ber- 

 muda's 1878 report on "Climate and Public Health": 



It is singular that with such a summer atmosphere, and 

 with a considerable portion of its surface occupied by un- 

 drained marshes, the exhalations from which must neces- 

 sarily be more or less prejudicial, Bermuda should have no 

 local summer fevers, such as prevail at Malta and at Gibral- 

 tar. This immunity from local disease may probably be due 

 to the small extent of land surface, and its distribution in 

 long narrow bands separated by arms of the sea and raised 

 but slightly above its surface, so that the whole area of each 

 island is frequently swept by the sea breeze which carries 

 away with it every unwholesome emanation.^ 



And in the same year from the report from Penang : 



The gaol was at the moment of outbreak overcrowded, and 

 the probable cause of the outbreak [cholera] was the admis- 

 sion of an incipient case of the disease into an atmosphere 

 rendered, through overcrowding, suitable for its generation 

 and rapid dissemination.^" 



An even more disturbing note of the times was that the medical men 

 were seemingly trjang to get out of the argument altogether : 



In England the conviction that quarantines are ineffective 

 against epidemics has advanced with greater decision and 

 rapidity among non-professional persons engaged in com- 

 mercial and public life than among medical men. It is not a 

 technical question, but one of evidence, on which a person 

 capable of observation is as competent a judge as any 

 physician.^^ 



This state of ignorance and fear, of political and economic domi- 

 nance, of unilateral 40-day quarantine periods based upon arbitrary 

 grounds, of resentment by the Moslem States that their coimtries were 

 regarded as less than clean, of medical argument instead of experi- 

 mentation, and of an extraordinary pursuit of national interests at 

 the risk of national and global health, dominated the picture of inter- 

 national discussion of communicable disease during the entire second 

 half of the nineteenth century. 



8 Ibid., page 37. 



* "Papers Relating to Her Majesty's Colonial Possessions, Reports for 1876 and 1877. 

 Presented to both Houses of Parliament by Comni:mf! of Her Majesty" (London, George E. 

 Eyre and William Spotteswoode, Printers, August 1878), page 25. 



1" Ibid., page 327. The treatment for this disease was worse than ideas on its transmis- 

 sion : "Thirty-three cases, of which 27 were fatal, were treated by hypodermic injections 

 of chloral hydrate; 6, of which 4 were fatal, with camphor : and 36, of which Tt were fatal, 

 by inhalation of sulphur fumes • * * tliis treatment was supplemented by half drachm 

 doses of dilute sulphuric acid, and a plentiful supply of iced water to drink" (pages 327- 

 328) The treatment did not have to be this way. In a brilliant monograph published by 

 Dr. William P.rooke O Shauglinessy in The Lancet in May 1R.''.2, an effective fluid therapy 

 for sufferers of cholera was described. It was similar to that used today. The thesis was lost 

 for over a century. However, Dr. O'Shaughnessy could not even apply it at the time to 

 London where cholera was devastating the city. He had been educated in Edinburgh and 

 moved to Lundnn. He was not jiermitted to practice medicine within seven miles of the city 

 because he did not have a license from the Royal College of Physicians". (See Abel Wolman. 

 "The Unreasonable Man", Second WHO/PAHO Lecture of Biomedical Sciences, Pan Ameri- 

 can Health Organization, 1867, page 1,4.) 



" Masters, op. cit., page 37. 



