( 8o ) 
CHAPTER X. 
QUARANTINE ADMINISTRATION IN BRITISH HONDURAS. 
In spite of failure, experience has shown the value of properly organised 
quarantine. The United States and the West Indian Sanitary Authorities, as- 
the result of the most recent investigations in Yellow fever prophylaxis, are not 
relaxing quarantine, but in the light of fresh knowledge they are making it 
more efficient, and at the same time less onerous for travellers and shipowners. 
The attitude of the United States towards quarantine at the present time is that 
it is “absolutely necessary both to preserve commerce and on the score of 
humanity,” and that “modern scientific quarantine is nothing more than the 
sanitation of ships.” — Wyman. It has also, however, been fully recognised that 
side by side with quarantine a determined effort must be made to get rid of 
endemic foci of quarantinable diseases, and to protect by local measures those 
places which by reason of their geographical position, commerce or insanitary 
condition are liable to infection. Due entirely to the recent brilliant scientific 
investigations in the mosquito-borne diseases and to our knowledge of plague, 
quarantine is becoming simplified and organised as a part of the machinery to 
exterminate the quarantinable diseases not from one State only, but from all 
communicating centres in any particular fever zone. Modern quarantine, as put 
forth at the recent International Pan-American Convention (1905), imposes the 
minimum restriction on trade compatible with security ; further, as the sanitary 
soundness of the particular State which may have to be quarantined will be a 
very considerable factor in guiding the other neighbouring countries in carrying 
out the necessary quarantine, a powerful stimulus is given to any place liable 
to infection by reason of its position, commerce or mal-sanitation to carry out 
the comparatively simple local sanitary measures of reform which recent 
investigations have proved to be efficacious in not only stamping out disease 
but, as in the case of Yellow fever, rendering the place immune. 
In framing quarantine regulations for British Honduras it is necessary in 
the first instance to consider the following data. 
A. — Geographical Position. — It is in the Yellow fever zone. 1 he 
Stegomyia fasciata is the common domestic mosquito and breeds all the year 
round, and Yellow fever has occurred throughout the year. The Colony is, 
therefore, vulnerable in any month. 
The Colony is surrounded by States in which Yellow fever is either endemic 
or liable to occur, and in which Stegomyia fasciata is known to be the common 
domestic mosquito. 
B. — Commercial Relations. — In the chapter devoted to the “ Relationship 
of Trade Routes to the distribution of Yellow fever” I give tables showing 
the volume of our trade with the neighbouring Republics, and I record instances 
of the occurrence of Yellow fever on ships trading between the Central 
American ports. 
