838 
PROCEEDINGS OE SECTION I. 
Having emigrants on board, who should have been scattered through 
the towns along the coast, the Government had to step in and save the 
colony by ordering her to steam rapidly to the head quarantine 
station in Moreton Bay, not touching at any port on the way. Every 
effort was made to stay the progress “of the disease on board, 
but notwithstanding all that could be done seventeen lives were lost 
before the disease was starved out at the quarantine station. We had, 
however, the satisfaction of not allowing the dread malady to find a 
landing-place on our continent. 
Whilst we are quite prepared to concede that in the case of the 
British Isles and the thickly inhabited continent of Europe, with a 
population of hundreds of thousands for our units, rigid quarantine is 
no longer possible, nor indeed called for, for the simple reason that 
the plagues of the northern hemisphere have become as it were 
acclimatized there, cholera, smallpox, typhus and yellow fever, &c. 
having become endemic throughout, it has become no longer possible 
for quarantine to shut them out or control them, besides which the 
disturbance to the vast trade and commerce carried on throughout the 
continent, necessarily caused by the quarantine law, has become so 
intolerable as to threaten the existence of healthy commercial life, if 
rigidly enforced. 
We therefore do not wonder that the sanitarians have determined, 
as w r as clearly shown at the late important conference at Dresden, to 
adopt as far as possible the principle of examination and purification 
in lieu of detention and isolation in their future dealings with infec- 
tious and contagious disease. This policy is all the more rational 
and easily understood when we take into account the vast strides 
which have been made in recent years in the sanitary organization 
and control of the cities and towns throughout the continent of 
Europe. 
Whilst we in Australia are quite prepared to concede all this to 
our Imperial sanitarians, we nevertheless claim for Australia that no 
such time has arrived for us. With our scattered population, our, as 
yet, insanitary towns and cities, we are in no such position as our 
European brethren to meet this hydra-headed monster face to face, 
nor can we expect to be for a long time to come ; and our only hope, 
therefore, rests upon our ability to continue effectively our present 
policy of keeping our doors shut to prevent the enemy entering. 
Such, if I mistake not, was the unanimous decision of the con- 
ference that assembled at Sydney ten years ago, and such, again, was 
the practical response recently given to the suggestion of the Imperial 
authorities asking the colonies to join in the Dresden convention. In 
the position I had the honour to hold at the time this proposal was 
made — that of Secretary of the Central Board of Health of the colony 
— it was my duty respectfully to advise our Government to decline on 
behalf of Queensland to be bound by the terms of that convention, 
and 1 believe the decision of the Queensland Central Board echoed 
the general sanitary opinion of Australia ; and I am persuaded that 
in now urging upon our provincial Australian Governments to lose no 
further time in sanctioning the proposal of the conference held in 
Sydney in 1884, I shall voice the opinion of the great majority of 
Australian sanitarians. 
