§ EARL DE LA WARRasked the Representative of the Local Government Board, Whether it was the intention of Her Majesty's Government to take any steps, by imposing quarantine or otherwise, to guard against the introduction of cholera into this country? The noble Lord could, perhaps, state whether the sanitary authorities of any port had the power of imposing quarantine; also, as regards restrictions upon the importation of rags from Eastern ports, by which the infection might be introduced; also, if there was any truth in the report that a fatal case of cholera had occurred in Wales, and one also at the London Docks?
§ LORD CARRINGTONMy Lords, with regard to the first Question of the noble Earl, I think I had better read to the House the opinion of the Medical Officer of the Privy Council, Mr. Simons. Mr. Simons, in 1879, pointed out that—
A quarantine which is ineffective is a mere irrational derangement of commerce, and a quarantine of the kind which insures success is more easily imagined than realized … Quarantine purporting to be effectual cannot rest satisfied with excluding from entry such persons as are obviously sick, but indispensably for its purpose must also refuse to admit the healthy till they shall have passed in perfectly 689 non-infectious circumstances at least as many days of probation as the disease can have days of incubation or latency …. In 1832–3, when some sort of quarantine against cholera was adopted here, the results gave no encouragement to a repetition …. The thought of quarantine in England became more and more obsolete, and the possibility of enforcing it, if ever so much desired, fell more and more towards nothingness. …. I dare say that quarantine in England was never otherwise than very lax. At all events, for many years past it has, in a medical sense, been abolished. … England, which long ago abandoned the system as of any avail against cholera, has now the consent of most European nations (as expressed by their Delegates to the Vienna Conference of 1874), in preferring for the defence of her ports another system which, under the name of ' medical inspection,' aims at obtaining the seclusion of actually infected persons, and the disinfection of ships and of articles that may have received infection from the sick.Under these circumstances, I think I may say that the Government has no intention of returning to the quarantine system. With regard to the latter part of the noble Earl's Question, I may say that there is nothing in the record of deaths from aggravated cases of diarrhœa to cause any uneasiness. Three cases since the disease has appeared in Egypt have been specially reported. The first was that of a man employed to clean sewers at Shoeburyness on July 8; the second, a stableman, at Kensington, on July 17; the third, a fatal case in Wales, on the 25th of July. There is no reason whatever for supposing that the cholera of the nature that attacked Egypt is present in London.