View report page

20
would involve deportation of whole families from their
homes to the quarantine stations, and unless such
stations were large enough to ensure each family being
kept rigorously apart from others, all removed
to the station would be exposed to a graver risk of
taking the infection than they would be in their own
homes. Disorganisation of commerce and of all the
occupations of life would be inevitable, to say nothing
of the expense involved therein, or of the ostracism
which would be inflicted on the infected town or
community. Gloucester experienced all these drawbacks
during the recent epidemic.
To prevent infection spreading from the quarantine
stations and hospitals, those in them would required to
be treated in the same manner as are the lepers in the
Sandwich Islands. No one could leave the infected
area without going through an intermediate stage of
quarantine, and all clothes, &c., would require to be
changed, if not destroyed, at each stage. Much
emphasis has been laid on the aerial spread of smallpox
from hospitals. If this be a fact, it is difficult to
imagine where, in this country, smallpox hospitals and
quarantine stations could be located with safety in the
absence of all protection by vaccination.
Vaccination as a voluntary procedure has been
tried and found to be ineffectual as a saieguard against
the spread of smallpox, and it follows from that experience,
that if compulsion be abandoned, reliance would