QUARANTINE LAWS. Quarantine laws are the result of imperfect knowledge on a subject which is of great importance to com merce. They are regulations chiefly of a restrictive nature, for the purpose of prevent ing the communication from one country to another of contagious diseases, by means of men, animals, goods, or letters. The term Quarantine originally signified a period of forty days, during which a person was subject to the regulations in question. The regula tions consist in the interruption of intercourse with tho country in which a contagious dis ease is supposed to prevail, and in the em ployment of certain precautionary measures respecting men, animals, goods, and letters, coming from or otherwise communicating with it. Men and animals are subjected to a probationary confinement, and goods and letters to a process of depuration, in order to ascertain that the contagious poison is not latent in the former ; and to expel it, if it be present, in the latter. Quarantine lines may either be drawn round a coast, as is the case in France, Italy, and Greece, with respect to the Levant; or they may be drawn along a land frontier, as on the frontier between Aus tria and Turkey. • Goods carried in ships or by land are sub ject to quarantine, according as they belong to the class of susceptible or non-susceptible goods. Goods which are supposed to be capable of containing and transmitting the poison of the plague, are called susceptible. Goods which are supposed to be incapable of containing and transmitting the poison of the plague, are called non-susceptible. All animal substances, such as wool, silk, and leather, and many vegetable substances, such as cot ton, linen, and paper, are deemed susceptible.
On the other kind, wood, metal, and fruits, are deemed non-susceptible. Every ship is furnished by the consul or other sanitary authority at the last port where it touched, with a document styled a Bill of Health, declaring the state of health in that country. If the ship brings a clean bill of health, the passengers and goods are not subject to any quarantine. If sho brings a foul bill, they are subject to quarantines of different dura tions, according as the plague is known or only suspected to have existed in the country at the ship's departure. On account of the prevalence of plague in the countries on the Levant, they are considered as permanently in a state of suspicion ; and no ship sailing from any of them is considered to bring a clean bill. The periods of quarantine vary from two or three to forty days ; the usual periods are from ten to twenty days. The building in which passengers usually perform their quarantine, and in which goods are de purated, is called a Lazaretto. The most spacious and best appointed lazarettoes in the Mediterranean are those at Malta and Mar seille.
The laws of quarantine depend directly on the contagion or non-contagion of certain dis eases; and on the difference between suscep tible and non-susceptible commodities, if the contagion-theory be true. It becomes there fore a medical question ; and the opinions of medical men throughout Europe are gradually tending to such a result as will either abolish quarantine altogether, or greatly modify and limit it : a result of very great importance to the commerce and industry of Europe.