PESTILENTIAL FOREIGN INVASION, 
— AS A — 
QUESTION OF STATES’ RIGHTS AND 
THE CONSTITUTION. 
THE FAILURE OF THE MARITIME STATES 
DEMANDS A COMMON DEFENCE. 
AN ADDRESS 
Delivered before the Tri-State Medical Society of Georgia, Alabama and 
Tennessee, at Chattanooga, October 26, 1892. 
BY JOSEPH HOLT, 3VL L>., 
Of new Orleans, La. 
L. Gkaham & Son, Print, 44-46 Ruronne St. 
]|S92r PESTILENTIAL FOREIGN INVASION, 
— AS A — 
QUESTION OF STATES’ RIGHTS AND 
THE CONSTITUTION. 
THE FAILURE OF THE MARITIME STATES 
DEMANDS A COMMON DEFENCE. 
AN ADDRESS 
Delivered before the Tri-State Medical Society of Georgia, Alabama and 
Tennessee, at Chattanooga, October 26, 1892. 
BY JOSEPH HOLT, M. IT, 
Of New Orleans, La. 
L. Graham & Son, Prijit, 44-46 Baronne St. 
1892. Gentlemen of the Tri-Stale Medical Society: In re- 
sponding to your desire to discussthe question of our com- 
mon defence against the invasions of foreign pestilence, 
I am unwilling in a mere personal capacity to address 
myself to a subject so momentous in consequences, so 
comprehensive of the general welfare, involving our 
social and political economy, domestic and foreign. It is 
too vast to allow of utterances from a source claiming no 
higher personality than myself; I therefore appear before 
you as the duly commissioned representative of the com- 
mercial and industrial interests of Louisiana, a unit of 
the Mississippi Valley. I represent these interests in this 
relation, because they are balanced in fine adjustment 
upon-the maintenance of public health by pestilence ex- 
clusion, and in testimony whereof I submit my credential: 
Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Louisiana, 
New Orleans, October 12, 1892. 
Dr. Joseph Holt: Dear Sir—It having come to the knowledge of the 
Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Louisiana, of which you are an 
honorary member, that you will attend by invitation the annual meet- 
ing of the Tri-State Medical Association of Georgia, Alabama and Ten- 
nessee, to be held at Chattanooga, the 26th inst., for the purpose of 
addressing that body on th® subject of maritime sanitary protection; and 
knowing as we do your views and sentiments concerning the preserva- 
tion of the commercial interests of the country, while also defending the 
public health, we earnestly request you to appear in a representative 
capacity for this organization, in furthering the work you have so suc- 
cessfully created and established, of reconciling the demands of both 
commerce and the public health, by equally protecting both. 
Yours very truly, 
[seal] Robert Bleakley, Secretary. 
Permit me to acknowledge my appreciation of the honor 
conferred by your committee in the invitation to address 
you on this occasion, and to thank you for the oppor- 
tunity so happily afforded of discussing with you per- 
haps the most important problem now pressing upon the 
American people as an imperative necessity demanding 
an immediate solution ; a necessity which compels the 4 
attention of the merchants, the scientists and statesmen 
of the interior as peremptorily as of the inhabitants of 
the exposed maritime coast. It compels a more modern 
recognition of the fact that our nationality is something 
more than a mere political fiction arranged as a halo 
around the State, and that in all matters of the general 
welfare we are a unit for weal or woe, whether manfully 
acknowledged or not. 
Our wisest medical observers, guided by historic ex- 
perience, have proclaimed a timely warning, in this lull of 
peace to prepare for war when next summer’s heats shall 
quicken into malignant activity the dormant forces of 
Asiatic cholera, now wintering in a thousand foci in the 
slums of Europe and in holds of filthy ships, to be set free 
upon the highways of traffic when the conditions of epi- 
demic spread shall favor the invading march of its deadly 
battalions. The allied forces of yellow fever, whose his- 
tory of conquest needs but to be mentioned to make us 
tremble, are at this moment hovering along the nearest 
tropical approaches of the line from San Diego to Balti- 
more, with destructive menace. 
When I contemplate the record of the pestilential inva- 
sions of our fair land ; the tens of thousands of the very 
flower of its people swept into untimely graves; the in- 
dustrial prostration and commercial losses, aggregating 
hundreds of millions of dollars ; the protracted anguish 
of mind and body ; when I recall to mind the general 
wretchedness, the public consternation and social dis- 
turbance dethroning reason and mercy, while installing 
anarchy ruled only by the frenzy of terror, with its shot- 
gun quarantines and other revolting displays of the savage 
cruelty of cowardice, the ferocious exhibition of “ man’s 
inhumanity to man; contemplating this historic detail 
of horrors, I stand appalled in the awful presence of the 
past, overwhelmed as in some vast cavern with the very 
bigness of the calamities which rise out of the darkness 
as dreadful spectres before me. My fears grow with 5 
contemplation, for reminiscence conjures into hideous 
pictures of reality, scenes of suffering and of death. 
Oh, the terrors of the ordeal! the distress, the unutter- 
able anguish, the intoxication of horrors in a pestilence- 
stricken city, when the death-roll is increasing day by 
day, when desolation and the blackness of despair en- 
compasses the sorrow-laden soul, and the world shuns 
you as the companion of pestilence and harbinger of de- 
struction which “hath no coveringfor “ the gates of 
death have been opened unto thee, and thou hast seen the 
doors of the shadow of death.” Then it is that we drain 
the cup of woe, and taste in it the extreme agony as vine- 
gar upon hyssop, while the fainting spirit cries with a loud 
voice, as it would yield up the ghost, “My God, my God, 
why hast thou forsaken us!” On every hand the weary 
and the heart broken, the dying and the dead, every- 
where the dead, blasted hopes, aimless existence, deserted 
industries, ruined commerce, blighted prosperity, poverty! 
This is pestilence, pictured from within; a mere shadow, 
a dim outline of dreadful realities. The volumes of the 
world’s history are profusely illustrated with these pic- 
tures of pestilential invasion, more fearful to look upon 
than battle scenes. 
Shall the volumes of the future be a continued record 
of pestilential sway, richly illumined, like the grotesque 
horrors of Dante’s Inferno, by the feverish genius of 
Dore ? As for others, we know not; the outside world 
is free to picture as it may, but for ourselves, the 
volumes of our future must no longer be disfigured and 
disgraced with these glaring tokens of ignorance, neg- 
ligence and stupidity, manifest in helplessness to resist 
and destroy an enemy whom science has subjected to the 
human will. 
The sovereignty of mind “over every living thing that 
moveth upon the earth” comprehends “Leviathan, when 
he maketh the deep to boil like a pot;” and “ the pes- 
tilence that walketh in darkness,” the living bacillus, 6 
that infinitesimal pathogenic primary of cholera, yellow 
fever, small-pox, typhus and the whole host of malig- 
nant infections. All are given under dominion, and man, 
the master, is himself responsible for damages that befall 
himself from contributory negligence. Of all vertebrates 
the least equipped with natural armament and with no 
other guide than his own intelligence, he is hedged about 
with destructive forces, while inexorable nature, moving 
in solemn complacency* bends no law from the line of its 
eternal course to meet him half way and shield him from 
threatening harm. In the desperate necessities of self- 
preservation we must unfold those powers stored within us, 
and by their exercise bear ourselves in victorious mastery, 
or be dashed to atoms in collision with the material forces 
of natural law. 
Being thrown, therefore, by a necessity of self-preser- 
vation upon the splendid resources of our own intelligence, 
let us deal with the agents of pestilence as material, living 
things, to be subjugated by our rational energies; not in 
misdirected and futile search for a panacea in drugs, but 
in the higher aim and surer direction of sanitary preven- 
tion, dispensing with dispensaries and drugs, and the ser- 
vices of doctors to prescribe and nurses to administer, 
and undertakers to undertake the final disposing of the 
huge percentage of inevitable mortality. As for immu- 
nity through attenuated virus, the ptomaines, and the truly 
wonderful announcements of Behring and Kitisato, 
Tizzoni and Catani concerning artificial immunity by in- 
oculation with immune blood, so named antitoxines, it is 
infinitely wiser to keep out and prevent altogether these 
foreign epidemic filth cultures. It may be curious, per- 
haps scientific, but never pleasant to risk immunity with 
sacrifice of considerable decency in having one’s food 
swarming with bacilli and spores of cholera, or of yellow 
fever and small-pox in the air and over everything, kill- 
ing pretty freely the unfortunate non-immuned, and 
now and then snatching off even the very elect whose 7 
supposed immunity happens to miss; a demonstrated 
“ experitnentum crucis” when the germ gets in its handy 
work. It is this experitnentum crucis we propose to 
avoid by extinguishing the germ through sanitary methods, 
not crowding science too far on lines of immune faith. 
And here let me utter for sanitary knowledge and art 
the sentiments of deepest gratitude to bacteriology, the 
mother science of the sanitary art, upon the guiding re- 
searches of whose learned, ingenious, indefatigable and 
unselfish workers the entire sanitary system squarely rests, 
and without which it would not exist. Very certain it is 
that scientific maritime sanitation is the direct and legiti- 
mate offspring of aseptic and antiseptic surgery, and is 
in no line of hereditary descent, nor acknowledges kin- 
ship with the disreputable old quarantine of detention. It 
is from no disrespect to bacteriology or spirit of ingrati- 
tude that sanitary science aspires to possess the field of 
preventive medicine, relieving the necessity for anti- 
toxine inoculation against foreign infections by promptly 
slaying the germs. 
It is unnecessary on this occasion to mention severally 
the pestilential infections, their etiology, epidemic history, 
symptoms and treatment. The text books and journals 
teem with such accounts, familiar to us all, while our pur- 
pose now moves on a loftier plane. In regard to treat- 
ment, however, I must invite your attention briefly to a 
most remarkable phenomenon invariably associated with 
cholera and yellow fever, not mentioned in the books. 
With tl e threatened or actual advent cf these two dis- 
eases there is always observed a great precursory and en- 
veloping cloud of sure-cure prescriptions. The journals 
full of them; the newspapers full of them; bushels and 
bushels, thousands and myriads of prescriptions; the young 
doctor just from the hospitals, double-shotted; the old 
lady, the quack, the washerwoman, everybod}'—except 
the experienced old doctor—has a sure remedy ; and all 
are satisfied, and so is cholera as it kills straight along, 8 
scoring its 52 per cent.; and yellow fever from 15 to 50 
per cent, mortality, just as in the good old days of sixty 
years ago. How far the antitoxines will come in to play 
their immune parts I fear to guess; but my prophetic mis- 
givings place them close beside poor Kibbe, on his cold 
spray, yellow fever cot, a glorious martyr of an inglorious 
martyrdom, the hero of an error. 
Perhaps I am ahead or wofully behind the times; but 
age and unhappy observation in pestilential epidemics 
have so enfeebled my therapeutic zeal of greener days, 
those callow days of faith, as now, in my maturer years, 
to force a transfer of hope and expectation from the fond 
dreams of pharmacopoeia to higher sanitary realms. 1 
have moved so far toward that beyond, were I now com- 
pelled to step down from the lofty plane of Preventive or 
State Medicine to the lowly level of writing prescriptions 
for Asiatic cholera and yellow fever patients, then would 
the desolation of disappointment be my abode and hu- 
miliation cover me as a pavilion. 
I know doctors, and have an abiding respect and ad- 
miration and affection ior them because I do know them ; I 
also know yellow fever, and Asiatic cholera, and small-pox, 
and typhus, and have a dread respect and agrewsome ad- 
miration, so to speak, for them, because 1 know them, and 
knowing them, I earnestly offer my advice to the Ameri- 
can people to indulge in no delusive phantoms of hope or 
exalted expectation in doctors of any degree, school or 
calling, or in any methods of treatment, drugs and doses 
in pestilence, if they can help it; but to rest an everlast- 
ing faith and hope in the saving sufficiency of intervening 
space, plenty of space, with our people on one side and 
pestilence on the other! The cause of all the trouble has 
been the crowding of cholera, yellow fever or small-pox 
and people all up in a jumble together; the remedy is to 
keep things orderly by keeping them apart. 
Intervening space will cost a little money ; but even 
that little the maritime States, with two or three excep- 9 
tions, have persistently refused to supply, preferring to» 
let the entire country run any desperate chance than tax 
themselves the outlay of a sufficient appropriation to pro- 
vide a thorough equipment (and less than thorough 
merely invites disaster), with a non-partisan administra- 
tion of its sanitary defence. A sanitary dead line, in- 
cluding every port of entry of the United States, fully 
equipped and always ready for defence, is the only space 
that can ever intervene between the American people 
and foreign pestilence. It is the only certain pro- 
phylactic, infinitely to be preferred as an antitoxine to 
the inoculations of Kitisato, Koch, Freire, Haffkine, or 
any other kind of foreign inoculation, for we are already 
socially, politically and physically the national victims of 
too much foreign inoculation of poisonous extraction, 
which threatens more disastrous consequences than pesti- 
lence itself. 
Consider what a scientific and glorious remedy is of- 
fered in a continuous and vigorously maintained national 
sanitary dead line; no cases, hence no attending physicians 
to prescribe, no methods of treatment or doses, and no 
nurses to administer, no funerals or newly bereaved 
widows and orphans, no disturbance of social order, or 
panics, or display of official brutality or inhuman coward- 
ice, no suppression of industries or injury to commerce, 
no ruthless bursting of iridescent State bubbles and sud- 
den exposure of general vacuity and frightful emptiness of 
preparation in scientific appliances and technical skill We 
should no longer see the needless and wanton exposure 
of sixty odd millions of our people to disease and death; 
no barbarous mismanagement and outrageous infliction 
of hardships and perils, which could easily have been 
avoided; no hideous mob display or need of military re- 
pression ; no engendering of acrimony by violations of 
interstate and international comity. 
Resting securely within the girdling dead fine of an 
evenly administered national sanitary defence, the fruits of 10 
industry and all the quests of livelihood and social inter- 
change shall move in a steady flow through the pulsating 
currents of human affairs, unretarded and unmolested by 
pestilential touch. 
Let us consider, too, that this instrument, so potent for 
good and safeguarded against mischief, may be employed 
at no greater expenditure than the one-thousandth of one 
per cent, of the extravagant cost of a single season’s 
epidemic waste; and requiring no inventive genius or out- 
lay in experimental effort, but only a judicious invest- 
ment in quarantine plants liberally equipped with all the 
apparatus of scientific requirement. 
Time and disasters have abundantly demonstrated the 
unreliability and total insufficiency of the disjointed and 
disconnected quarantines dotted along the vast pe- 
riphery of our maritime boundary; each independent in its 
methods, most of them without method, or if supplied 
with it, absolutely without equipment, and therefore with- 
out practical scientific existence ; a quarantine merely in 
name with the States’ authority to annoy commerce 
and impose fees and fines on shippingfor sanitary services 
impossible without elaborate and costly appliances, there- 
fore merely a legal fiction . a momentous national re- 
sponsibility made everybody’s business, and, therefore, in 
general effect nobody’s business; one responsibility under 
many heads and nearly all of them the official creations of 
local politics, and political favor, appointed and removed 
by the local powers that happen to be; ever changing, 
therefore having small incentive to excel. Such is our 
bulwark of State maritime sanitary defence; as unstable, 
as water in theory, method, official intelligence, morality, 
integrity or any other quality of assurance. 
This is a faithful picture of an existing fact, and what 
else could be expected along so extended a line of free 
and independent sovereigns, free to do as they please 
and entirely independent, each in its individual notions 
and method of administering a great national duty apper- 11 
tainin<r to international and interstate commerce and the 
general welfare. 
The Ameri can people are weary of procrastination and 
dallying delay in a firm and decisive assumption of an 
imperative national duty compulsorily imposed by the 
Constitution, both in the spirit of its preamble and in the 
letter of its provisions, through which the people in their 
entirety must look to themselves for the enforcement of 
the common defence, the promotion of the general wel- 
fare and the insuring of domestic tranquillity. 
No foreign invasion from hostile fleets could possibly 
work such wide-spread violence to the general welfare or 
more tremendously disturb our domestic tranquillity than 
foreign invasions from pestilence; the whole people 
are aroused by the closeness of their escapes from a 
general devastation of yellow fever in 1888 and of cholera 
a few weeks ago, and will presently demand the surest 
possible protection, guaranteed to us in the speediest ap- 
plied, the most uniform and scientifically trustworthy 
manner of the highest attainable efficiency. 
I speak to-day in behalf of general protection to be af- 
forded the States of the interior through the sanitary 
safety of the seaboard. I speak in behalf of the com- 
merce and industries of the Mississippi valley from the 
lakes to the gulf; in behalf of a principle of equitable 
dealing, which demands the equal distribution of a com- 
mon responsibility and attending expense, and that the 
duties of the many shall not be imposed upon the few; 
that Louisiana, California, Alabama and South Carolina 
shall no longer bear the burden of efficient quarantine de- 
fence which should be extended along the entire national 
boundary. Not only do I plead the injustice of the bur- 
den, but the futility of their effort if defensive barriers 
are lacking elsewhere along the line; for protection to be 
complete must be equally provided and uniformly admin- 
istered along the whole line of exposure ; whereas now, 
their laborious efforts are threatened with failure because 
of general negligence elsewhere along the line. 12 
In corroboration of this allegation I will offer here a 
brief extract from a report of the International Quaran- 
tine Inspection Commission after a thorough examination 
of the quarantine establishments of the St. Lawrence and 
Atlantic coast, in September last: “We have carefully 
examined every station on the coast as far down as this 
point [Deleware Breakwater], and find that much the 
same conditions exist everywhere. 
“Not a single station is supplied with appliances for 
cleaning and disinfecting ships. Only a few have facili- 
ties for disinfecting baggage, while nearly all have poor 
hospital accommodations. 
“ The commission furnished the authorities of each port 
its conclusions and recommendations, and in every in- 
stance it was urged that a quarantine of exclusion be 
maintained until the station could be equipped for such 
treatment of passengers, baggage, cargoes and vessels 
as would meet modern requirements. It was also urged 
that such equipments be pushed during the autumn and 
winter, that they might be ready for next year, when the 
danger from cholera will be great. 
“A quarantine of exclusion should not be necessary at 
a port properly equipped, and it is not to the credit of a 
country like ours that we are forced to resort to it. With 
preparation safety maybe had with little interference with 
commerce and travel. This is well shown at New 
Orleans, which has the most complete quarantine system 
in the world. 
“ Under the old methods, with an attempted quarantine 
of exclusion during the hot months, that city had yellow 
fever, year after year, while with the modern methods the 
disease has been kept out for twelve years and commerce 
has been kept free.” 
Tiie deficiencies alluded to have been called to the at- 
tention of Congress and the several State Legislatures 
year after year, but without result. It costs money to 
equip a quarantine station, and in the absence of imme- 
diate danger, this has been difficult to obtain. 13 
Most of the stations are under local control, and the 
efficiency and method of enforcement of the regulations 
vary greatly. The stations, taken as a whole, constitute 
our only defence against the introduction of plagues, and 
as a chain is only as strong as its weakest link, our prep- 
aration to keep such plagues out must remain imperfect 
until such weak points can be strengthened. 
“ I think all the sanitary authorities in the United States 
agree that a department of public health at Washington, 
is a necessity that will doubtless claim the attention of 
Congress next winter.’ 
This commission was composed of Dr. J. N. McCor- 
mack, of Kentucky, its president; Dr. Irving A. Watson, 
of New Hampshire; Dr. Henry B. Baker, of Michigan, 
and Dr. Peter H. Bryce, of Ontario. 
In further dorroboration I will quote from a letter 
received by me from Dr. Irving A. Watson, a member of 
this quarantine commission and secretary of the American 
Public Health Association. It is dated at Concord, 
N. H., October 4, 1892. 
Embodied in an expression of friendly regard, he says: 
“ I am very glad that you have returned to New Orleans 
with renewed energy and an unwavering determination 
to wage a sanitary warfare to the end. I certainly hope 
you will not cease your efforts until every American 
port is as well equipped as New Orleans to resist the in- 
vasion of pestilential diseases. It is a lamentable fact that 
with a very few exceptions—perhaps I ought to say with 
one exception—the ports of the United States are not 
scientifically equipped as respects maritime sanitation. 
How the remedy is to be brought about I do not know, 
but it seems to me that we must insist upon some national 
legislation at the next session of Congress that will 
strengthen the weak points in our coast defences.” 
Here then is a complete exposure and arraignment by 
the most competent and very highest official authority, of 
the whole quarantine service as assumed and administered 14 
by the several States themselves; a failure of preparation, 
and that, too, in the face of the open approach, day by 
day, of Asiatic cholera, and the most deliberate and por- 
tentous warning ever heralded to a people; never in the 
history of the world was an invasion so instantaneously and 
momentarily recorded. On time and as duly advertised the 
cholera struck our shore, not in some obscure inlet of 
entry but in our central, richest port, there to find the 
extremest poverty of unpreparedness. The world knows 
the rest! Had it struck in neighboring ports it would 
have found the same. 
Could there be imagined in any of the concerns of 
life a more deliberate and stupendous failure of 
States to perform an assumed duty? What greater in- 
centive than Asiatic cholera could have moved them from 
inertia to action, or what possible guaranty can they now 
offer of future trustworthiness? Absolutely none. 
It is an established principle of law that wherever a 
person, corporation or government, voluntarily or as an 
agent, undertakes to perform a service (or is what the 
Roman law called a “mandatory”) he is bound to bring to 
the performance of such service that amount of skill and 
care which the service reasonably demands. The fact of 
the service being gratuitous does not alter the degree of 
care required; more especially in the performance of a 
duty involving personal and public dangers, and requiring 
more than ordinary skill and care. 
Through a protracted trial of many years in the assumed 
operation of a Federal function, the States, with two or 
three very recent exceptions, have disastrously failed all 
along the historic course, while epidemic after epidemic 
of yellow fever and cholera has spread from the seaboard 
inland. These maritime States have historically failed, 
and, through conclusive proof of inability to accomplish, 
have forfeited every claim to further indulgence in the 
custody of so great a trust. It matters not what may 
have been the ground of their assumption, they have 15 
failed; failed in their trust, and there is no alternative 
but that the sovereign people through their Federal 
authority must commit this trust to a higher custody, 
where it rationally and rightfully belongs. 
In making these remarks in behalf of a great public trust I 
am well aware of the mortal offence they may give some 
little coteries of local officials and political accidents. 
Before the vast interests centred in the quarantine 
protection of the United States, mere local influence and 
these emolument-seeking individuals are as idle dust in 
the balance, only to be brushed out and not permitted 
for an instant to weigh against tens of millions of people 
with their hundreds of millions of invested capital. 
The State quarantine history of our country is a chrono- 
logical record of pestilential appearances and epidemics, 
along with arbitrary inflictions upon commerce, in some 
places destructive of extensive branches of trade and asso- 
ciated industries; it is a long chapter in the history of yel- 
low fever and cholera, furnishing the only explanation of 
retarded progress in regions exceptionally favored in 
climate and richness of resources. Until the invention 
and inauguration of the modern “ system of maritime 
sanitation,” opening the valley of the Mississippi to the 
commerce of the world, and keeping its portals open 
every hour ot every day since, the quarantines, without 
exception, were a mere show of defence. In practical 
effect they have reversed theoretical intention and 
have become barriers to commerce and highways 
of pestilence, their protective value depending wholly 
upon the primitive prolonged detention, with super- 
stitious conjurations of sulphurous and carbolic smells, 
and burning caldron incantations in dark and cavern- 
ous holds. The high priests of these mysteries have 
promptly exacted tithes for ceremonial services ren- 
dered, and thus has commerce been preyed upon in the 
name of sanitary protection. In some parts collecting 
quarantine tees seems to be the only function, while in 16 
others even long detention of filthy and infected ships has 
brought such disappointment as to compel the substitu- 
tion of non-intercourse for quarantine in ultimate confes- 
sion of failure. 
With such a record and assurance of its continuance 
clearly before us, the time has fully come when necessity 
imperatively demands a radical change by the assumption 
of respective duties by the nation and the State, and no 
divided responsibility. 
A mixed responsibility in such affairs has never suc- 
ceeded and indeed cannot. If the State attempts a 
national function and the nation reciprocally interferes 
with the internal health affairs of the State, professional 
punctilio and jealousy soon clash and the malevolence of 
each neutralizes both. 
The converse of this is equally true: if the national 
government assumes and exercises its lawful obligation in 
the sovereign control of a Federal jurisdiction concerning 
this matter, while the State vigorously busies itself with 
its own internal sanitary affairs, they render mutual aid in 
concord of effort for the general welfare. 
On this rock of mixed responsibility Congress wrecked 
its National Board of Health, in the sad attempt to placate 
certain States by acquiescence in a partial recognition of 
an imaginary and vociferously asserted reserved right. 
Instead of asserting and exercising its own authority in 
constitutional lines clearly established by precedent, Con- 
gress attempted to associate harmoniously State and Fed- 
eral responsibilities by an indulgent mixing of functions; 
the State continuing its management of maritime and in- 
terstate quarantine; while the National Board of Health 
operated under a defective law which granted no specific 
authority to perform clearly defined duties but was vague- 
ly directed to co-operate with local health boards, but was 
unable to meet contingencies of urgent kind except 
through appeal to the president. Rigorously forbidden 
its normal field of action, the National Board, to be seen 17 
and felt, busily obtruded itself—according to its own con- 
fession—in a systematic espionage upon health conditions 
within the States; and, only finding its “compensation 
during the time when actually engaged in the performance 
of their duties,” was exceedingly diligent in hunting for 
germs, telegraphing startling accounts of direful threaten- 
ings, and constantly engaging in sharp interchanges of 
criticism, together with animadversions upon local organi- 
zations, and persons and things. The defective instru- 
ment of a defective law, such in practice were the func- 
tions of supervising and other subordinates, located and 
operating within the police limits and arrogatingin effect, 
and sometimes offensively, the actual reserved power of 
the State. 
Such a board failed because it was born of timidity and 
compromise, and had to fail, burnt up by its own faulty 
construction and intense friction engendered by power 
out of place, a lost force with friction and pain. 
No purer patriotism or broader humanity ever con- 
ceived or designed an instrument of nobler purpose than 
was exhibited in the creation of the National Board of 
Health, nor was the failure in any sense a discredit to 
any one concerned. Responding to a prodigious public 
demand in a time of great epidemic disturbance, without 
precedent, planned and organized in the face of a strenu- 
ous opposition, compelling an extreme caution resulting 
in an act formulated tentatively and with extreme timidity, 
it is not surprising that inherent faults, clustered about 
the central error of mixed function and divided responsi- 
bility, finally swamped the usefulness of the National 
Board of Health in a sea of popular disfavor. 
Nq one perhaps more vigorously resisted and fought 
that National Board than did I myself as the responsible 
head of the Louisiana State Health Department, for rea- 
sons of clearly foreseen danger growing out of these 
organic errors in duties not definitely established within 
lawful limits, and therefore unharnessed powers of mis- 18 
chief to the commerce and general welfare of the Missis- 
sippi valley, particularly if by a further extension of 
authority that board had been made the custodian of the 
maritime quarantines, which were then, as generally at 
present, merely quarantines of sanitary pretence and 
arbitrary detention. We were in no manner practically 
guarded against a mischievous exercise of power already 
manifesting an aggressive disposition. 
My hostile resentment and judicious fear were not 
against the principle of national control, but against the 
dangerous instrument devised and the power of arbitrary 
prolonged detention, as fully set forth in my address to 
the Louisiana State Senate in relation to quarantine im- 
provement, June 26, 1884; which was a vigorous protest 
against discrimination in favor of transcontinental or lati- 
tudinal direction of trade through the Atlantic ports by 
placing in the hands of Eastern capitalists the power of 
throttling longitudinal commerce through the ports of the 
gulf by the instrumentality of a health board. These re- 
marks so clearly explain the necessity of properly limit- 
ing and safeguarding a national health authority as to make 
them worthy of quotation here: 
“On account of great disquietude for years existing 
between the States, particularly of the gulf, and through- 
out the Mississippi valley, and, at times, of the Atlantic 
seaboard; the general apprehension and mutual lack of 
confidence; these States and different communities in the 
States being at times in a condition closely bordering on 
one of actual war, with their shot-gun quarantines; the 
general government conceived the idea of harmonizing 
these discordant elements, and presently there sprung 
into existence the National Board. 
“ With true human instinct this body, unrestrained, 
soon displayed a grasping desire for more authority. 
Our people quickly saw that these national health pre- 
servers were certain to become the destroyers of our 
commercial interests—saw that it it were true, as is gener- 19 
ally believed, that the powerful railroad lobby of Eastern 
capitalists could control congressional legislation at the 
national capital, how much more easily could it handle 
any central health board of a few men, should the in- 
ducement so to do seem sufficient to that gigantic power. 
“ The tremendous incentive to that course became 
more and more evident as the present and constantly in- 
creasing struggle for the bonanza of trade to the south of 
us grew in intensity between the longitudinal lines leading 
from the heart of the continent to the gulf ports, and the 
monster latitudinal railroads running to the Atlantic 
cities. 
“With the power in the hands of a central board, se- 
lected and controled by Eastern capitalists, to proclaim a 
quarantine of arbitrary detention as against vessels from 
the southward, the keys to the gates of the Mississippi 
valley would be in the possession of an agency most in- 
tensely hostile to the interests of Louisiana and the 
neighboring States. 
“ Our ports could and would be hermetically sealed 
arbitrarily for six months in the year, and the vast trade 
of the valley forced to travel by the long and expensive 
latitudinal lines of railroads to New York, Philadelphia, 
Boston and Baltimore, our commercial rivals, and hence 
by a tremendously extended sea voyage to the tropical 
ports of delivery, and the import trade forced to seek 
the reverse journey. In other words, the one side and 
the hypothenuse of a right angle triangle would have to 
be followed, instead of proceeding on the shorter base 
line. 
“That these powerful aggregations of capital could 
thus force this immense trade from the natural channel is 
evident, if we consider for a moment their immense ca- 
pacities to achieve the result. 
“Weigh for an instant the pressure of hundreds of 
millions of gold upon feeble human flesh, represented in 
nine members of a national board, with the controlling 20 
power presently in the hands of appointees from New 
York and the West. 
“ The great seaports of Norfolk, Baltimore, Philadel- 
phia, New York and Boston, the whole system of trans- 
continental railroads would send a swarm of agents every 
summer into Louisiana with microscopes and chemicals 
hunting for germs; the telegraph wires playing day and 
night transmitting startling accounts of suspicious discov- 
eries, and the public mind of the whole country whipped 
into a fever of anxiety as a prelude to shutting up our 
port, ostensibly for yellow fever, really in the commercial 
interests of rivals. 
“Louisiana fought that National Board on the broad 
principles of States’ rights and actual self-preservation, 
and was victorious.” What States’ right? The right to 
demand that “ No preference shall be given by any regu- 
lation of commerce or revenue to the ports of one State 
over those of another,” according to clause 5, section 9, 
of article I of the constitution. 
Speaking for Louisiana as one of the maritime States, 
concerning an assumed task belonging to them all, I 
further said : “We rest under a moral obligation, to fail in 
which would be disgraceful and most injurious to all our 
relations with surrounding States.” Does this obliga- 
tion apply to Louisiana any more than to Florida, Massa- 
chusetts or New York? 
The National Board of Health has rendered a very 
great service to the cause of sanitation in the United 
States, not only in the dissemination of knowledge and in 
some instances of unquestionable assistance to local au- 
thorities, but chiefly in the valuable instruction elaborated 
in the experimental working of its organic construction. 
Having carefully noted the bearings of it machinery 
and points of dangerous frictional contact, it is easy to 
apply the lessons of experience to a reconstructed 
mechanism, operating on a plan strictly federal in design 
and limitation, and fashioned as a permanent organiza- 
tion, non-partisan. 21 
The power, and with it the danger, of arbitrary pro- 
longed detention under influences hostile to a State have 
been removed by the substitution of the modern “ System 
of Maritime Sanitation” without detention, except the 
brief delay for prudent observation in the case of vessels 
direct from an infected port, not prejudicial to commerce, 
and the longer detention of vessels with pestilential illness 
on board, but always in the waters of the State. 
The organic safeguards of a national board or bureau 
of health would compel the ample providing and enforce- 
ment of a quarantine of maritime sanitation strictly 
through the application of scientific methods and appara- 
tus, thoroughly tried and approved by the exacting tests 
of the highest requirement and perfectly systematized 
throughout. Such a system, made general for the com- 
mon defence, would throw about our common country 
the highest attainable guaranty of protection against the 
importation of pestilence, with the least possible exaction 
and absolutely no hindrance to commerce; enforcing, for 
quarantine maintenance, a schedule of uniform charges 
for uniform services. The model already existing in its 
perfected state, such a system can be generalized and 
applied for the common defence without one dollar of 
expenditure in experimental effort. 
Concerning quarantine maintenance, while the govern- 
ment should pay for primary construction and equipment 
of stations, the subsequent maintenance should be pro- 
vided through a carefully arranged schedule of uniform 
inspection fees and an equitable charge, a quid fro qtio, 
for actual services rendered in the sanitary treatment 
necessary to permit entry without jeopardy to the port. 
Considered alone from the position of a sound economic 
policy in fostering commerce, so jealously provided for 
and hedged about by the Constitution, shipping should 
not be charged quarantine dues of any kind except for 
quarantine maintenance, including the salaries of quaran- 
tine officers and employes; and these dues should be 
strictly proportioned to the services rendered. 22 
A Federal system, such as here proposed, would be 
amply self-supporting. Moreover, it would remove from 
commerce the additional burden of furnishing the revenue 
to pay liberal salaries and meet other expenses of State or 
local health boards having no legislative appropriation 
and too scantily provided with income from other sources 
to be self-supporting while exercising the internal police 
functions of the State in its sanitary work. 
In addition to a maritime sanitary system generalized in 
application under one authority as a national safeguard, 
and in order to relieve the very serious objection properly 
urged in regard to the employment of strangers in local 
quarantine management, who are not personally interested 
and in sympathetic touch with the community under their 
immediate care, and to avoid all occasion of offence natu- 
rally begotten of suspicion, each maritime State should 
have its quarantines officered by its own citizens, chosen 
for highest merit, determined by a rigid competitive trial 
of applicants by a non-political national board of exam- 
iners, preferably of the army and navy; the local quaran- 
tine staff to be sufficiently paid in order to secure the best 
material for the best service, and not subject to removal 
except for just cause or limitation of age. The super- 
vising national board to be permanent in personnel and 
construction, like the Federal judiciary, and not subject 
to change with every incoming administration. 
Within three years of its creation the quarantine force 
of the United States would become a disciplined corps of 
sanitary specialists, surpassing in scientific and technical 
acquirement any hygienic body in the world. It would 
bring the national defence against pestilence to a par 
with the highest modernized system of military and naval 
protection. 
Such features embodied in a non-partisan and scientific 
national board or bureau of health, with jurisdiction ex- 
tending to the enforcement of maritime sanitation in for- 
eign ports of departure—where the work should properly 23 
begin—and control of maritime and interstate quarantine 
defences, the gathering and distributing of sanitary infor- 
mation, including the health status, domestic and foreign, 
would solve at once the question of protecting commerce, 
while promoting the general welfare and insuring domes- 
tic tranquillity by providing for the common defence 
against foreign pestilential invasion. 
The act creating such a body should organically re- 
strain its functions to these several duties, without locating 
subordinates within the police jurisdiction of a State, to 
take cognizance of its health affairs and official behavior. 
Such federal functions exercised with decision and steadi- 
ness of discipline would constitute a barrier against pesti- 
lence free from honest, disinterested objections, and one 
that would afford to the whole American people the high- 
est attainable guaranty of protection with the least obstruc- 
tion to commerce and tax upon shipping. The State of 
Ohio could know precisely and at all times what regula- 
tions and methods of sanitation were being enforced along 
the coasts of California, Texas, New York and Maine. 
In contrast, under the present no-method or go-as-you- 
please system (if you will permit the paradox), adjoining 
sea-coast States, for the most part, do not know what is 
going on, or what kind of defence is being made, to the 
right and left of them. A State board of health, con- 
trolling the quarantine, may at onetime be of the highest 
order of intelligence and integrity, and a few months later 
may be removed and places filled with recipients of po- 
litical favor, presently accused of peculation and like ras- 
calities in wretched schemes and jobs; smirching a bright 
record of honorable achievement with a huge stigma in- 
delibly fixing disgrace ; but how can otherStates, although 
concerned, know of or prevent such changes? And yet 
retrogressive changes of this kind signify a dangerous 
menace locally and to the American commonwealth; for 
an intellectually and morally feeble State board means 
an unreliable, poorly disciplined and dangerous quaran- 24 
tine; illustrating the maxim of Baron Jomini,in his cele- 
brated Principles of Strategy and the Art of War: “ The 
quality of the general is shown in his staff ” But how 
is the commonwealth to know of, or restrain or punish, 
these negligences fostered by home politics? 
In addition to inherent and fatal incapacities growing 
out of uncontrollable conditions of a local political kind, 
the States themselves are handicapped by constitutional 
restrictions which inhibit the exercise of sovereign con- 
trol, isolating them by a specific injunction not to “enter 
into any agreement or compact with another State or with 
a foreign power,” and confining each to the enjoyment of 
reserved rights strictly within its own geographical limit. 
In the practice of quarantine, State sovereignty is not com- 
mensurate with the thing to be controlled, but is hugely 
overlapped by the foreign extension of quarantine and com- 
merce relations beyond the seaboard on the one side, 
and interstate commerce and the general welfare relations 
on the other; it can not cover the territory of its exterior 
and interior relations. 
It is evident then that in the vastly extended and com- 
plex function of the international and interstate protection 
of the vital interests of commerce and promotion of the 
general welfare, the isolated State endeavors to wield an 
instrument of a national breadth of action while itself 
limited by restrictive inhibition within a narrow middle 
ground, totally insufficient to comprehend and success- 
fully sustain a tremendous responsibility of a purely fed- 
eral kind. 
With an overwhelming array of historical evidence and 
ready citations of abundant local testimony to verify in 
every particular all that is here alleged concerning 
the terrific consequences of pestilential invasions, destroy- 
ing the domestic tranquillity and ruinously affecting the 
general welfare, and the failure of the States to maintain 
a protective cordon, it is powerfully manifest that the de- 
liberative wisdom of Congress can engage in no task more 25 
imperative than that of framing an act such as will estab- 
lish a national bureau, department or board of health on 
a permanent and solid foundation, purely scientific and 
wholly removed from political interference or sectional 
prejudice. 
Concerning the inability of the maritime States to deal 
individually, and in a trustworthy manner of steadfastly 
maintained integrity, with the question of quarantine, in- 
cluding its vast relations at home and abroad, my views 
are consistently the same to-day as in times past; in 
evidence of which I present the following extract from 
the proceedings of the Trans-Mississippi Congress, held 
at Denver, the same being a reply to a telegram from 
one of the committees, dated May 21, 1891: 
“To Dr. 'Joseph Holt, Portland, Oregon: Do you 
favor a National Board of Health? Please wire in full 
immediately.” My answer: “Our social and commer- 
cial interests, interstate and foreign, urgently demand 
a national bureau or department of health, to supervise 
sanitary foreign relations, and as a medium of informa- 
tion and a national protective agent, co-operating with 
but not assuming police powers of a State vested in 
local health boards.” 
Bearing in mind the fact of a growing necessity of pro- 
tection with increase ot population, which means more 
food for pestilence, more people to suffer and be killed, 
for the cholera and yellow fever of to-day are the same 
malignant, epidemical contagions as of 1832, i853and 1878, 
and confronted by this exposition of our experiences of 
quarantine defence, and in painful view of the probabili- 
ties of next summer, we may well inquire: What are the 
American people going to do in their dilemma between 
the acknowledged power of Congress to afford relief 
under the regulation of the commerce and general wel- 
fare clauses, a manifest duty in a dormant state on the 
one side, and on the other, the repeatedly demonstrated 
failure of the maritime States in the exercise of a relin- 26 
quished federal authority, a permissible jurisdiction we 
may say, over quarantine? Does it mean that we are to 
abandon our growing 64,000,000 of people, with their 
vast commercial and industrial interests, the public health 
and the public livelihood, to the mere haphazard of a lot 
of quarantine stations so-called; two or three of scientific 
merit—according to the report of the commission, and of 
the others, “ not a single station supplied with appliances 
for cleansing and disinfecting ships?” Does it mean that 
we have reached the end of our tether, and find ourselves 
tied up by an assumed reserved right of a State to use 
sovereign pleasure in a matter of the common safety in- 
volving other States and nations beyond its jurisdictional 
control ? 
Quoting from Kent (Jurisprudence of the United 
States), also citing Cooley: “The power to regulate 
commerce in matters requiring a general system and uni - 
form rule is in Congress exclusively. The power vested 
in Congress to regulate interstate and foreign commerce 
includes the right to regulate all the means and instruments 
by which such commerce is carried on, and which might 
be used by the State to discriminate in any way against 
such commerce. No definite rule can be laid down as to 
when the power is absolutely exclusive, and when, on the 
other hand, it depends upon an act of Congress assuming 
to take control of the subject. It has been said to be 
thus exclusive when the subject is national in character 
and admits of a uniform regulation. 
“ The States have exclusive control of all matters of 
purely internal concern. In general, any restrictions, di- 
rect or indirect, upon the entry into, exit from, or passage 
through a State, of persons, property or communications, 
is beyond the limit of State power. But a State law is 
valid the primary purpose and effect of which is to regu- 
late a matter of purely internal concern, though it may in- 
cidentally affect interstate and foreign commerce; though 
Congress may at any time supersede such a law so far as 27 
it affects interstate or foreign commerce” (or, we may 
add, the general welfare ). I would like to know of a 
subject more national in character, or one which admits 
of or requires a more uniform regulation, than the gen- 
eral maritime and interstate quarantines? 
To settle at one stroke the fatuous absurdity of this 
remarkable notion of States’ rights and its supposed 
police powers in the matter of quarantine control, I will 
ask if there exists any right of an individu which tran- 
scends the rights of the commonwealth? If there is any 
right of a State which exceeds the rights of other States? 
and please to name it; and finally, if the rights of 
States or the Constitution itself exceeds the rights and 
authority of the American people? 
The reply to this inquiry completely and finally disposes 
of the whole question of any inherent reserved right of a 
State over maritime and interstate quarantine. 
I have searched with diligence every word and letter of 
the preamble and every article and clause of the Consti- 
tution, and also its interpretation by such authorities as 
Mr. Randolph and Mr. Jefferson, Chief Justice Marshall, 
Judge Cooley, Mr. Bryce, Kent’s jurispru- 
dence of the United States, and the speeches of our most 
eminent senators on parallel questions, such as the 
national banking system and the revenue power, the pro- 
tection of American industries, navigation laws, Missis- 
sippi river improvement and the education bill, and other 
cognate questions, and have failed to find one single jus- 
tification of the idea that the State has a reserved right 
or even a concurrent claim to administer maritime or 
international and interstate quarantine. 
In saying this I am fully aware that Congress, in 1797, 
authorized the president “to direct the revenue officers 
commanding ports and revenue cutters to aid in the exe- 
cution of quarantine, and also the execution of the health 
laws, in such manner as may appear to him necessary.” 
This creates no authority and acknowledges no inherent 28 
right, except of the governmentto exercise official amenity 
under circumstances of that kind. 
Growing out of the fundamental law of self-preservation, 
the right of enforcing quarantine is inherent and univer- 
sally conceded as a natural right of every government in 
the protection of its people. 
In the absence, however, of the federal exercise of 
this national duty, the question of the inherent or natural 
right of a State to protect its citizens by interposing 
quarantine as a bar to the importation of pestilence, and 
the constitutionality of maintaining the same by an equi- 
table charge upon shipping for true services rendered in 
sanitary treatment, and strictly for quarantine mainte- 
nance alone, was affirmatively decided by the Supreme 
Court of the United States, May io, 1888, in the case 
Morgan’s Louisiana & Texas Railroad & Steamship Com- 
pany vs. The Board of Health of the State of Louisiana, 
intervenor. 
It is astonishing to note the prevailing confusion of 
notions concerning this particular form of alleged re- 
served right of a State. The mistake in the case has 
probably arisen from the fact that the federal govern- 
ment has allowed the States to exercise a jurisdic- 
tion, as mentioned, without argument, on the ground of 
expediency, because the government had nothing better 
to offer than the ancient method the States themselves 
were vigorously enforcing upon commerce, maintaining 
a high road for pestilence while paralyzing commerce 
through the old sulphur pot and carbolic drench 
quarantine of long detention and unjust charges. The 
national government shrewdly and most wisely refrained 
from insisting upon itself performing the very gross and 
disagreeable office of harassing commerce by embargoing 
the ports of a State, partly because the State was dis- 
posed to prefer self-immolation on this altar of Hygeia, 
but chiefly in order to avoid giving offence and exposing 
itself to the charge of secretly, desiring to “give a pref- 29 
erence of commerce or revenue to the ports of one State 
over those of another.” 
The maritime States, therefore, through the exercise of 
a permissible jurisdiction (for I can find no better term 
to convey the idea) and through no inherent or so-called 
reserved right in the use of internal police power—and 
they have no other—have managed, for better or for worse, 
usually the latter, the entire public health business, inter- 
nal, interstate and international. In administering quar- 
antine they have not done so through one of those powers 
exercisable concurrently by the national government and 
the State, but one taking effect only in the absence of a 
federal assumption of a constitutionally granted both di- 
rect and implied right, which we are to-day urging shall 
again be assumed. 
The powers granted to the National Government are 
delegated powers, enumerated in and defined by the in- 
strument which has created the union, and among others, 
Section 8, Clause i, of the Constitution: “The Congress 
shall have power to * * * provide for the common de- 
fence and general welfare of the United States.” In 
immediate connection let it be remembered,—“ The mere 
grant of a power to Congress does not of itself, in most 
cases, imply a prohibition upon the States to exercise a 
like power. * * * It is not the mere existence of the na- 
tional power, but its exercise, which is incompatible 
with the exercise of the same power by the States.” 
Cooley, quoted by Bryce. “ It is not doubted that Con- 
gress has the power to go beyond the general regulations 
of commerce, which it is accustomed to establish, and to 
descend to the most minute directions if it shall be 
deemed advisable ; and that, to whatever extent ground 
shall be covered by those directions, the exercise of State 
power is excluded.” Cooley, Constitutional Limitations, 
P- 732. 
The federal assumption of a delegated constitutional 
power supersedes the authority of the State. 30 
So far as the American people are concerned, and it is 
they who are altogether concerned—for they have been 
and may yet be compelled to suffer and also pay for the 
damages to themselves—both Congress and the maritime 
States in quarantine failure and pestilence invasion 
are alike chargeable with contributory negligence in the 
true legal application of that term. Not only has the 
public health not been protected, but commerce has been 
unfairly taxed and mightily abused. 
Before closing these remarks I can not refrain from 
briefly directing your attention to the close parallel be- 
tween the danger of pestilential invasion across our ex- 
tended line of seaboard and the necessity of uniform pro- 
tection alongthe whole line, which can only be secured by 
systematizing under one controlling head with resources 
at command, and the danger of annual inundation along 
the lower Mississippi and the necessity of a uniform sys- 
tem of levees to keep the water off, which has been done 
only under one sufficient and controlling head. Without 
such a system under such a head Mr. B—, an intelligent 
and energetic planter, builds an ample and trustworthy 
levee along his plantation front; Mr. C—, living five miles 
above, does not believe in levees or the Eads theory in 
any form, but has a theory of his own, while Mr. A—, 
two miles below, would like to have a good levee, but 
times are too hard and the river i& rising too fast anyhow. 
Now the question is, what becomes of Messrs B—, C— 
and A— before the high water season has passed? The 
federal government stands in relation to the several 
States in this matter as an anthoritative head, precisely 
as does the riparian State to B—, C— and A— in the 
matter of a protective levee system. 
In support of the question of federal authority in the 
care and management of maritime and interstate health 
protection, I could quote here, in conclusive evidence con- 
cerning relevant subjects, dozens of pages containing the 
opinions of the most eminent jurists of our country from 31 
the inception of its constitutional and federal history, 
sustained by the conclusions of the civil war. 
This, however, is unnecessary, since Congress has 
definitely settled the controversy in the creation of the 
National Board of Health, and repeatedly voting in sub- 
sequent sessions appropriations for its maintenance. 
It is a conceded power in the spirit and letter of the 
preamble and under the general welfare and commerce 
clauses; a power that was dormant, then active, then, on 
account of detective legislation, dormant again; and now 
we come forward under a pressure of public necessity to 
insist upon the immediate revivifying and arousing into 
beneficent action this sleeping power, and also to insist 
that it shall be exercised through a perfected organism, 
competent to render all the good hoped and expected of 
it, while securely safeguarded from doing harm, above 
all by removing it from politics, and that it shall be done 
immediately. 
In conclusion, it is historically established that the 
maritime States have failed to maintain a consistent line 
of quarantine defence, have repeatedly permitted the 
incursions of pestilence, from which they have been un- 
able to afford protection to neighboring States or pre- 
serve domestic tranquillity or to respect the rights of 
commerce, which has been grievously oppressed. Their 
inability and failure through a long-tried experiment is an 
unalterable fact. It is logically evident, therefore, that 
State and national protection, harmonizing the public 
health with the public livelihood, can only be obtained 
through a common defence by organizing into one sys- 
tem the sanitary barriers, international and interstate, 
locating the controlling authority in a national bureau, 
department or board, organically safeguarded against 
concurrent mischief and rendered non-partisan. 
It is evident, finally, that the purposes of this authority 
can only be attained in practice by the uniform applica- 
tion of scientific principles, typically exhibited in the 32 
modern invention of the “System of Maritime Sanita- 
tion,” thoroughly organized, tested and approved, now 
being operated below New Orleans, for the protection of 
the people, the commerce and industries of the Mississippi 
valley. 
The demand of the American people is for protection of 
life and the general welfare against pestilence invasion. 
Before this demand all sentiments of local pride and mo- 
tives of personal advantage must wither away. Perfect 
protection can be and must be secured in a common de- 
fence. 
from the “ New Orleans Times-Democrat ” 
October 27, 1892.'] 
“PESTILENTIAL FOREIGN INVASION.” 
Under the above heading we publish elsewhere this 
morning an address delivered yesterday at Chattanooga, 
Tenn., by Dr. Joseph Holt, of this city, before the Tri- 
Medical Association of Georgia, Alabama and Tennessee. 
The subject is one with which Dr. Holt is so familiar, and 
in connection with which his name has such deservedly 
pre-eminent mention throughout the United States, that 
his views on the question must always and everywhere 
command the most respectful attention. 
The argument of Dr. Holt’s address goes to prove that 
there is nothing either in the United States Constitution, or 
in the rights which the individual States of the Union have 
reserved to themselves, in any way incompatible with the 
creation and operation of a federal quarantine service 
which shall embrace all of the seaboard States. It con- 
tends that, just as the general government is charged with 
the duty of defending the country against the invasion of 
armed force, so it should charge, if it has not yet charged, 
itself with the duty of defending the country against the 
invasion of pestilence. The maritime States, which would 
be first attacked, in the event of an armed invasion from 33 
abroad, would not consider it a “ right” secured to them 
under the constitution to be compelled unaided to find the 
means of repelling that invasion. They would not only 
welcome, but they would call for, assistance from all the- 
other States of the Union, or in other words, from the 
general government, as a thing to which they were enti- 
tled, to help them battle with the invading force. 
In what respect is there a difference between invasion 
by a seen and by an unseen force, as far as constitu- 
tional rights are concerned? There is none. The same 
obligation, legal and moral, that would make the federal 
power undertake the protection of the country from the 
attack of a foreign fleet or army at whatever point in any 
one or more of the States it might choose to attempt to land, 
precisely the same obligation should make the federal) 
power relieve the seaboard States of the duty of fighting 
single-handed against the more insidious invasion of un- 
seen pestilence from abroad. 
It is not the interest of the seaboard States alone that 
is involved in the invasion of pestilence. The interest of 
all the States, of Missouri as of New York, of Nebraska 
as of Louisiana, is involved in that invasion; and it stands 
to reason, therefore, that all the States, interior as well 
as maritime, should have a voice and a hand in the task 
of combating that invasion. 
The seaboard States, moreover, have been tried and 
found wanting. With the one single exception of Louis- 
iana, the committee of scientists that under the recent 
scare of cholera were sent to inspect and report upon the 
condition of the quarantine stations on the Atlantic and) 
gulf coasts found that all the quarantine stations were 
more or less inefficient, and all of them, with the same 
single exception, inadequate to the exclusion of cholera. 
New York quarantine has on more than one occasion this 
year proved itself to be absolutely useless for the preven- 
tion of disease. Through it have passed typhus fever, 
small-pox and cholera in rapid succession; and if pesti- 34 
fences in these or other forms present themselves there, 
-with the quarantine service as it is, there is not the 
shadow of a doubt but that they will pass the barrier with 
similar ease. 
The quarantine of the seaboard States having been 
proved inadequate, there appears to be nothing for it but 
that the general government take the matter in hand, 
and establish and maintain a system of maritime sanita- 
tion at all points on the coast that are exposed to pestilen- 
tial invasion. The proved inadequacy of State quaran- 
tines is the strong and clinching argument in favor of a 
national quarantine. It is unjust to interior States and 
• communities that they should at all times have to depend 
for their immunity from pestilential disease on the greater 
or less efficiency of State quarantines; why should Ohio 
and Kansas and Louisiana be kept on the tenter-hooks of 
apprehension of a dreaded visitation of cholera merely 
because New York quarantine is apolitical quarantine 
and about as able to keep out cholera or any other disease 
as the charlatan’s pills were to prevent earthquake? 
For all these reasons, which we have suggested rather 
than mentioned, as well as others which we have not re- 
ferred to at all, a national quarantine should be establish- 
ed by the federal government and maintained at all sea- 
board points accessible to disease from abroad. It should 
be an absolutely non-political and non-partisan quaran- 
tine, conducted as one great whole by a central authority, 
and it should be operated as far as possible by local 
officers, whose sympathies would be with their particular 
neighborhood and whose zeal in their work would there- 
by be greatly heightened. And, above all things, no 
officer of national quarantine should ever be removed but 
for incompetency, or other genuine reason disconnected 
entirely from politics and from party. 
Such is the argument, and such the advocacy, of Dr. 
Holt in his able address delivered last night before the 
Tri-State Medical Society at Chatanooga, Tenn. The 35 
argument, as Dr. Holt has put it, is unanswerable, so far 
as we can see. And there is not any doubt but that it 
will, coming particularly from such a well known cham- 
pion of State’s rights as well as of thorough sanitation, 
convert many a hitherto opponent of a national quarantine 
to the hearty support of such a movement.