OUR QUARANTINE REGULATIONS CRITICISED.

Auckland Star, Volume XXXI, Issue 104, 3 May 1900, Page 5

OUR QUARANTINE REGULATIONS CRITICISED.

KEEPING OUT THE PLAGUE. INTERVIEW WITH DR. LLOYD SMITH". This morning a "Star," reporter j hud an interview with Dr. Lloyd ! Smith, ship's elector on the s.s. Waka- : nui, now in port, on the subject of ' precautions against, the bubonic ii plague. J)r. Lloyd Smith, who is an jM.I3. (London) and D.P.H. (London), wns for a time house physician at the Thames Hospital. Greenwich. He studied bacteriology nt Guy's Hospital, London, and has had considerable experience of tropical diseases. On fhe subject of quarantine regulations the doctor had a good deal to say. Quarantining to the extent practised in Auckland is in his. opinion quite unnecessary. In fact, he characterises the local regulations las llsiliy."' All that is necessary is I rhal the port medical officer should j inspect a vessel from an. infected port | directly it. arrives and examine every one on board—-this, hy the way, is ! not (j'oi;e here, the vessel being- sent ! straight to quarantine. If there is i no case of plague on board there is, | he maintains, no need, to quarantine hit" ship at all. Should a case be found, however, the patient should jbe taken to the quarantine station ■and the ship disinfected at the same I time. Any suspected eases on board should be kept under observation for a Jew days, and if. the diseaae does not develop they can then be allowed to go. The system of keeping1 all the passengers and crew on board a ship in quarantine the doctor considers a mistake: they should be put ashore at the quarantine station, if they are taken there at all. '"Take the case of Shanghai," said the doctor. "It is from three to five ! days' steam from Hongkong, where tin-; plague has existed since 1894. | When n vessel arrives from Hong- | kong- the. port medical officer goes lout, in a launch aud meets the ship, | and it he iinds no illness on board she is allowed to enter Shanghai [forthwith. Any plague case found [cm beard is put ashore in quaranj line nnd Hie vessel fumigated. Al»though the plague lias been in Hongkong for six years, it has hardly ever : appeared in Shanghai. Last summer j there was not a single case. The i same system is adopted in Japan, i with equally satisfactory results. They do not quarantine at London. I remember a case of plague being ; brought into the. Thames Hospital j from one of the P. and O. boats—a I Lascar from Bombay. He was simply j put into the general hospital in a room by himsf.'lf. There was no quarantiningl. The ship was simply thoroughly disinfected with liquid sulphur dioxide. Take,- the case of a ship coming to London from an infected port —say from Hamburg, where cholera was! ! prevalent a few years ago. The port '■ medical officer examines everyone on ! board, and if a case is found he is put ashore at once. The rest of the passervers are allowed to go | jth?ir names and addresses being! j first taken. Suspected cases are placed under observation and if the disease does not develop they too are allowed to depart. All the clothing on j an infected ship is disinfected and the i vessel washed out. But if there is no j case on board none of these precautions are taken. In Germany the system is much the j same. In Hamburg, for instance, one j of the largest German ports, a ship i arriving from the East is at once visit- ! ed by the port medical officer, at the j mouth of the river. He examines all j on board and the clothing is sent ashore in suitable bags and steam disinfected. Everything is done within three hours, including- the washing of the crew's quarters, under the | J supervision of the port officials, and the examining of the bilge water. This latter precaution, by the way, is lone that should always be taken iii the I ease of a vessel coming from an infected port. The medical officers j stays on board until the clothes are j brought back to the ship, and he then allows her to proceed. Any infectious i case on board is simply isolated ashore. In the event of a case of plague being discovered on shore what should! be done? Is it necessary to quaran- i tine a whole block, as they do in Syd- ! ney ? . i The doctor thought not, but he [pointed out the necessity for having the city kept in a sanitary condition. i "The plague cannot get a hold," he ! said, "except in dirty" surroundings. i 11 a case were to break- out in Auckland it could .be taken to the hospital ; and isolated there, and if the house is ! i a wooden one, or at all dirty, the best | ; thing to do would be to tiirn the in- I mates out and fumigate it. It would be advisable to keep the inmates isolated at the hospital—apart from the patient, of course—until there is no | danger of their developing the. dis- i ease." The conversation turned on the subject of the boy who was admitted to the Hospital last week, suffering from a rat-bite. The doctor has not seen the patient, but he appears sceptical about the ease being one of plague. | "To be able to say definitely whether the case is one of plague,"he said."they should have caught the rat and kept it alive, and if it did die tests should I have buen made to see if it had tho | plague or not. This could have been ascertained by inoculating other aniI mals with the serum taken from the j rat, including animals refractory to : plague. Otherwise they oan only go by the symptoms observed in the boy, which in themselves would not be conclusive. Of course, when everyone i 3 j ■talking of plague, a case like'this is j given a degree of prominence Avhieh otherwise it would never receive/