PAGE JOURNAL OF BANKING, CURRENCY, AND FINANCE. City Weekly Bank Returns-Banks of New York, Boston, Philadelphia, New Orleans, Pittsburg, St. Louis, Providence.. 212 Pike's Peak Gold Region................................... 217 Louisiana Valuation. 218 South Carolina Debt and Finances 219 Illinois State Debt.. 220 221 222 Assessed Valuation of the City and County of Albany.-Debt of Pennsylvania.. STATISTICS OF TRADE AND COMMERCE. The Whale Fishery in 1860.. Fremont Trade.-Trade of Norfolk Brighton Cattle Market for 1860.. ..... Trade of Hamilton.-Stock and Shipments of Flour and Wheat.. Eastern Shoes in Philadelphia.-Number of Passengers by each line of Steamers.. Shipping of Gloucester.-Exports of Flour and Grain from Lake Michigan 228 224 225 226 227 228 228 229 220 Militia Force of the United States-Growth of New Orleans.. Population of Charleston.-Western Population.-Minnesota.. North Carolina Census.-Immigration into the United States... MERCANTILE MISCELLANIES. 247 248 249 250 252 258 ............ 254 257 258 259 260 261 262 262 263 264 266 267 263 269 270 Coin Sale in Philadelphia... THE BOOK TRADE. Notices of new Books or new Editions.... .271-272 HUNT'S MERCHANTS' MAGAZINE AND COMMERCIAL REVIEW. FEBRUARY, 1861. Art. I.-QUARANTINE REGULATIONS. Proceedings and Debates of the Fourth National Quarantine and Sanitary Convention, held in the city of Boston, June 14, 15, and 16.—Reported FOR THE CITY COUNCIL OF BOSTON. Quarantine Regulations, as approved by the National Quarantine and Sanitary Association of the United States, 1860.-A Report by A. N. BELL, ELISHA HARRIS, AND WILSON JEWELL. DR. WILSON JEWELL, of Philadelphia, after an experience of eight years as a member of the Board of Health of that city, and after a careful examination into the practical working of the quarantine laws of the United States, became convinced that they were the outgrowth of dogmas based upon obsolete theories; "that they embarrassed commerce, oppressed the merchant, imposed severe restrictions on the healthy, inflicted cruelties on the sick, and, when rigidly enforced, became the ready means of disseminating and entailing disease and death. These glaring imperfections, and the inconsistency of quarantine enactments with each other in the different States, together with the frequent embarrassments arising from abortive efforts to enforce and apply quarantine regulations, engaged my serious attention. Thus circumstanced, I was prompted to the inquiry-how can a revision of the present ill-advised systems of quarantine laws be most judiciously and extensively effected! A uniform code of regulations, operating alike in all our seaports, and offering the least hinderance to an active commerce, and with a humane regard for the health of the passengers and crews, and the comfort of the sick on board of all vessels detained at quarantine stations, suggested itself as the only correct fundamental principle for accomplishing the necessary reform in quarantine legislation. "A knowledge of the fact that, with the great commercial nations of Europe, the efficiency of quarantine had assumed a very commanding posi tion among the topics in the science of hygiene, and had led to the holding of a Conférence Sanitaire in Paris in 1851-2, offered to my mind the idea that a national convention of judicious and well-informed delegates from the seaboard cities of our Atlantic States, might be influential in adjusting disputed points, and become the medium through which commerce could be relieved from the trammels that existing codes of laws had unnecessarily imposed upon it." Following up these reflections, on the 10th of November, 1856, at a meeting of the Board of Health of Philadelphia, Dr. Jewell offered and obtained the adoption of the following resolution :— “Resolved, That a committee of three, with the president, be appointed to correspond with the Boards of Health of New York, Boston, Baltimore, and New Orleans, on the propriety of calling a convention of delegates from the various boards of health in the maritime cities of the United States, for the purpose of a conference in relation to the establishment of a uniform system of revised quarantine laws." As chairman of the committee under this resolution of the Philadelphia Board of Health, Dr. Jewell urged the importance of a revised and uniform system of quarantine laws for the protection of the maritime cities of the United States; and in response to his call, the first Sanitary Congress in America was held in the Supreme Court-room, in Philadel phia, May 13th, 1857. The Convention remained in session three days, and resulted in the adoption of a series of recommendations pertinent to quarantine reform. It was at this first meeting of individuals declaring for a reform in quarantine regulations, that the "Quarantine and Sanitary Convention" received its name.-Introduction to the report of the third national quarantine and sanitary convention. By Wilson Jewell. "Hunt's Merchants' Magazine for October, (1856,) contains a very able article on the subject of quarantine, written by Dr. A. N. Bell, of Brooklyn. Dr. Bell was formerly a surgeon it the U. S. Navy, and has had favorable opportunities for investigating the subject of which he treats. His view is that infectious diseases are propagated by things, and not by persons, and he therefore argues against a quarantine as applied to the latter, who should be cleansed from infectious things, and allowed their freedom. He recommends the erection of warehouses at a sufficient distance from the city, where every infected ship should be unladen, and then purified and allowed to proceed on its voyage, or go to sea again."-N. Y. Journal of Commerce. The article in our Magazine, of which we have quoted the above notice, gave a brief history of quarantine from its origin, identifying it with a belief in the contagiousness of epidemic diseases, which belief was common in the fourteenth century; and forcibly depicted the inconsistency of such false dogmas with the present certainties of science. "Everywhere dense population, misery, want, and filth constitute the source as well as the contagion of epidemics, but at this very day, the 1st day of September, 1856, almost in the center of one of the largest commercial cities in the world, is gathered the detritus of every sickly clime, to be crammed in and crowded round the quarantine of New York! Do the filthy rags of the tropics-for there has been an infected ship and cargo of them at New York quarantine since June last--grow less "contagious" from the heat, darkness, and confinement of the hold of a ship? Do the putrid hides of South America and the goat skins of Cape de Verdes become tanned of their poison by wreaking it on the inhabitants of a populous city? Ay! they do. ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY OF SUCH SHIPS AND SUCH CARGOES. are now surrounded by the shores of New York bay! "But, alas! for the poor passengers and sailors, they are quarantined; many of them quarantined as are the victims of this relic of barbarism, on the Bay Ridge from Fort Hamilton to Brooklyn. "Yet these ships and these cargoes are now as they would have been centuries ago; they are as the thirty feet deep of slime from the table lands of Abyssinia deposited in the lap of Egypt, as the Hooghly exhaling its putrid remains, or as the gleanings of the Father of Waters, in which crocodiles only can revel--all, all these things lost sight of in the heartless selfishness which dictates a quarantine for persons--a seclusion of the sick and needy! It is an anomaly in the age of Christianity and civilization. In the midst of free schools, free academies, and public charities, we are appalled by an infatuated fanaticism which should only be measured by the ages which gave it birth. Every ennobling sentiment of the human soul revolts with horror at the idea of the seclusion which the enforcers of quarantine would practice upon one in the time of greatest need. It is adverse to every impulse of sympathy-antagonistic to all the kindly emotions of the heart, it inculcates a beastly selfishness and fraticidal barbarism which has, in the nature of causes, always brought upon the enforcers of it a retributory certainty of infliction with the worst horrors of their imagination, in a degree of concentrated strength proportionate to their efforts to restrain it. The barricaders of black death who were infatuated by the hideous terror of judgments inflicted for secret sins, were in some degree excusable in acts measured by the light of science, but that such inhumanity, such remorseless heartlessness and cowardly selfishness should exist and be tolerated now, is surely the most inconceivable incident of barbarism connected with the present age. "There are at this time agitators for the removal of the New York quarantine from its present site to a greater distance from this city, with the avowed object of effecting a more perfect seclusion of the sick. Surely every individual of common intelligence can now comprehend the practical truth, that pure air is the only real security against epidemics. In all the regulations of quarantine this prime necessity has ever been overlooked; confinement in a foul atmosphere has been the distinguishing feature of sickly ships, quarantine hospitals, and lazarettos, in all ages, everywhere; they convert common fevers into pestilence, which, in their attempt to restrain, they oftentimes render contagious, and they are of all others the most concentrated foci of disease. They constantly avert the attention of the public from the true precautionary sanitary measures, under the absurd impression that epidemics can be shut out or barricaded like unwelcome visitors. "It is unnecessary now to state that there is no disease to which mankind is heir, contagious or non-contagious, which may not be aggravated by the infliction of quarantine on persons; and quarantines, as heretofore conducted, are necessarily dangerous and disease-producing in proportion to the strictness with which the laws that govern them are enforced. What is the disease which any community would fear from contagion? Small-pox is perhaps the most pre-eminently contagious epidemic that prevails, but can it prevail in any civilized community in the world? Certainly not. The guard against it from contact is perfect by vaccination, which can be made universal without an item of expense to the city or State. There is no disease compatible with cleanliness which may occur at all, that can be otherwise influenced than aggravated by the quarantine of persons. "But of things. Well ventilated and cleanly ships rarely or never have to stand quarantine, no matter what their cargo, or port from which they last cleared. Ships which are built without proper provision for fresh air, overcrowded with passengers, or not kept clean, are those which come into port infected. That a large number of such, congregated together, may prove a fruitful source for epidemics, there is abundant evidence: a prominent exemplification now exists at the New York quarantine. And the spread of disease from them can only be measured by the conditions adequate to its support. "If ships are properly ventilated and kept clean they are the most healthy of human abodes, because they have the freest access of pure air. Ships without proper provision for fresh air sometimes lie for long periods in sickly harbors and take in such cargoes as may render it impossible to prevent their accumulating the seeds of disease; others take on board loads of human beings with closely packed clothing and rubbish, frequently from the vilest dens of corruption; and others are freighted with filthy rags, hides, etc., liable to contain infection to begin with, and sure to generate it if not exposed to the free access of air, which will multiply and break forth with violence commensurate with the conditions which favor it. On arrival, the practice of quarantine is, if any one on board is sick of an infectious disease, not only to detain such one on board to continue inhaling the poison which is destroying life, but to detain all the rest, likewise, till they are also poisoned; the alternative to this is the quarantine hospital, to be surrounded by misery in order to alleviate it! Nor does it end here; the ship and cargo of poison is anchored in the midst of a populous community for the exhalations which arise from her hold to poison the air they breathe-disease and death thus stabbing in the dark, while the victim is under a false sense of security from the traitor he has nourished in his bosom. "Can any one now survey the quarantine ground and harbor of New York--and other quarantines are just as bad-and view the crape-clad mansions which border the finest bay in the world, without revolting from his inmost soul aganst quarantines? But what should be done with infected ships and cargoes; the infected THINGS which entail disease and death? The principles of economy alone will dictate a ready reply. Let warehouses be erected, with proper provision for security and the admission of free air-nature's great disinfector-at a sufficient distance from the city, and there let every infected ship be at once unladen, and the ship ventilated and permitted to go to sea again. "And of persons, would any one, can any one, apply quarantine to himself, and say, seclude them from all human sympathy, from the tender look, the gentle hand, the "No, never! Persons communicate no infection, carry no epidemics. Bauish the very name of quarantine, as applied to them, and require |