§ SIR JOHN PAKINGTONsaid, he would beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, Whether the attention of Her Majesty's Government has been directed to the disease now prevailing in Russia and some parts of Prussia; and whether the Government propose to take any steps to ascertain the true nature of the disease, and to avert its introduction into this country?
§ SIR GEORGE GREYSir, the attention of the Government was directed to this subject by a statement which appeared in one of the daily papers on the 29th of March. Instructions were immediately sent by telegraph to Sir Andrew Buchanan, at St. Petersburg, to make without delay the fullest inquiries into the subject, and to send from time to time all the information he can obtain as to the origin, nature, and progress of the disease, and the mode of treatment of it at St. Petersburg. Instructions were also sent to Her Majesty's Representatives at Berlin, Vienna, Copenhagen, and Stockholm, and to our Consuls at the Baltic ports, to send full information as to the disease, should it appear in any of those parts of Europe. A medical officer has also been directed to proceed at once to St. Petersburg to investigate and report upon the disease, and the officers of Customs have been directed to exercise the utmost vigilance in the examination of vessels coming from the Baltic. The information we have as yet received has been by telegraph, but Sir Andrew Buchanan says that he has forwarded by post a printed medical report on the disease, which is stated to be a fever new in Russia, but not unknown in other parts of 785 Europe, and that the mortality—which had been up to eighty per day—was said to be diminishing at St. Petersburg. Lord Napier states that the Minister of the Interior had told him that an unknown disorder had appeared along the valley of the Vistula, but that he was not aware that it came from Russia. The Consul at Dantzic, in a telegram dated to-day, says that a disorder prevalent in that district is a complaint of the brain, chiefly affecting children, but that it had no connection with the disease existing at St. Petersburg. The Consul at Warsaw, in a telegram also received to-day, says that some cases of typhus have occurred there, but no disease having the proportions of an epidemic disorder has up to the present time appeared in Poland. The Consul at Konigsberg reports that no particular epidemic disorder exists there, and the Consul at Memel says that no symptoms of the disease have appeared in that district nor in the adjacent Russian provinces; and a telegram just received from the Consul at Stettin reports that no epidemic has exhibited itself there.