CHAPTER LXXXV 



QUARANTINE AS A PREVENTIVE 



FIRE kindles in your building. You sound the 

 alarm. The fire company surrounds the building 

 and there confines the fire until extinguished. 



This is quarantine. Unless the building is thus 

 quarantined, the fire may spread and consume a 

 thousand other buildings. 



One is taken with disease. The house is 

 guarded. None but doctors and nurses allowed 

 to enter. The guard is kept until the disease is 

 ended and the house disinfected. 



This is quarantine. Unless it is enforced, the 

 disease may spread and infect a thousand others. 

 The one quarantined is quite as well off ; the thou- 

 sand are as much better off as health is better than 

 sickness, it may be, as life is better than death. 



Not quarantining the one a few days, may be 

 quarantining the thousand eternally in the grave. 



In considering each contagious and infectious 

 disease, quarantine has been urged. It is now, 

 and again, urged for contagious and infectious dis- 

 eases alike. 



Quarantine the child in disease. The adult in 

 disease. However slight the disease, quarantine 

 it all the same, chicken pox no less than small- 



