23 



store), salted cheese, salt in bulk, a^ quantity of sumac, and merchan- 

 dise, including many bales of cloth from Barcelona, a port not under 

 suspicion. The master of the vessel was at once required to give 

 20,000 scudi security not to leave the harbor until given pratique. To 

 make assurance doubly sure, the rudder was taken away from the ship 

 and a watch set. All persons, except the sick and a sufficient number 

 of seamen to guard the ship, were sent ashore to a place known as the 

 Borgo, where all garments were taken from them and they themselves 

 exposed to the fumes of boiling pitch and afterwards washed with 

 vinegar. Some of the clothing was burned and some washed, aired, 

 and perfumed for fifty days. 



The sick were sent to a lazaretto, the Cuba, a huge stone building, 

 which still stands at Palermo as a monument of early quarantine. 



The treatment , given the cargo was as follows: Barrels of salted 

 fish, washed outside, first with sea water and then with vinegar; cases 

 of sugar, salted cheese, and sumac, coverings removed and burned 

 and the commodities without further treatment delivered to the owners; 

 salt, no treatment, not being considered infectible; merchandise, aired 

 and perfumed ashore for 50 days, and the cloth unrolled and hung 

 from the rigging of the ship for 50 days. The sails and cordage of 

 the ship were taken down, submerged in the sea for a week, and then 

 hung from the masts, yards, and booms in the air, sun, and dew, by 

 day and night, as long as the ship remained in quarantine. Fumiga- 

 tion was made in the interior of the ship by boiling pitch in caldrons 

 between decks. Fifty days were set as the period of detention, 

 instead of forty, because the season was winter. 



FURTHER HISTORY OF QUARANTINE. 



Without touching on quarantine in America, which is another and 

 interesting story, it is profitable to take a view of the further history 

 of quarantine in Europe. Following the discovery by Anthony van 

 Leeuwenhoek, in 1675, of bacteria, called by him " animalcules," there 

 was a wide belief in the casual connection of microscopic creatures 

 with disease, a belief supported by the doctrine of living contagion 

 enunciated by Marcus Antonius Plenciz, of Vienna, in 1762, but it 

 was without marked effect on quarantine procedure. The theory, in 

 fact, lost hold on the public and medical minds to such an extent that 

 in the early part of the nineteenth century the doctrine of a living 

 contagion was looked upon as an absurd assumption. It was not until 

 the middle of the last century, following the investigations of Pasteur, 

 Pollender and Bavaine, that quarantine practice became established 

 on its modern scientific basis. 



English quarantine procedure prior to 1800 did not differ much 

 from that of the Mediterranean ports. English vessels, which did 



