14 EARLY QUARANTINE ARRANGEMENTS OF SALEM. 



"At a meeting of y e Selectmen Octob r 16th, 1702. 



" Ord d y* if any dy of y e small pox they shall be buried 

 about 3 of y e clock in y e afternoon. 



" Ord d y* Constable Jn Williams doth attend y e funer- 

 alls of any y* dy of y e small pox & walk before y e corps 

 to give notice to any y* may be in danger of y e infec- 

 tion." 



Before the action last recorded a Provincial Act, dated 

 June 25, 1701, had gone into effect (we will examine this 

 act presently) ; it differed in scope and character from the 

 temporary orders formerly issued by the General Court, 

 and was kept alive, with few additions and modifications, 

 for a century. But it is a surprising fact that, from the set- 

 tlement of this colony to the year 1701, the matter of 

 providing by law against the importation of contagious 

 distempers should have received so little attention among 

 a people devoted to navigation, frequently scourged with 

 unmanageable epidemics and prone to legislate on all sorts 

 of subjects whether profane or sacred. With the exception 

 of these three enactments, neither of which remained 

 in force more than two years, two of which were 

 carefully limited in their territorial scope, the local 

 authorities got no aid from the General Court before 

 1700, in protecting their populations against foreign 

 disease, and even the local authorities themselves were 

 very sparing of their efforts in this behalf. Possibly 

 some explanation of this omission may be found in the ob- 

 vious fact that the leading men of these seaboard towns, 

 upon whom would devolve the making and enforcing of lo- 

 cal regulations, were at the same time the ship-owners and 

 ship-masters who could, by a tacit understanding among 

 themselves, observe such regulations and thus render need- 

 less all appeal to legal authority. The men who controlled 

 the commerce of the infant colony were beyond all others 



