Easier Quarantine

The U. S. Government last week yielded to a long yearning on the part of shipping companies to have quarantine regulations modified. For the first time since 1744 ships may tie up in New York Harbor without pausing for medical inspection of passengers and crew. The U. S. Public Health Service and the New York City Health Department hereafter will take the word of the chief medical officers aboard SENIOR SURGEON AKIN "Permission is granted . . .

to proceed without stopping at Quarantine." most passenger ships which enter the harbor that all is well aboard, that none of the passengers or crew suffers from "quarantinable" diseases, that all cases of "contagious" diseases are isolated. Ships should now dock in New York Harbor at least one hour earlier. As 400,000 incoming voyagers each year have noticed, every ship entering New York dropped anchor at Quarantine off Rosebank, Staten Island. A sailor ran a yellow flag up the mast.

Inspectors from the Quarantine Station went aboard.* They took the ship's chief medical officer's word concerning the health of first and second-class passengers, examined the sick on those lists, carefully scrutinized every third-class passenger for sickness and lousiness, glanced over the cargo for abnormal evidences of rats. Only when the Quarantine Station men gave the word might the yellow flag be hauled down, anchor weighed, the ship set in motion to her dock. This sanitary permission to deal with people ashore maritime men call "pratique." Hereafter most passenger ships bound for New York may avoid all delay at Quarantine by taking advantage of "radio pratique." This is a convenience worked out last year by Dr. Charles Vivian Akin Jr., senior surgeon of the U. S.

Public Health Service, soon after being appointed Chief Quarantine officer at Rosebank. When an inbound qualified ship is 24 to twelve hours outside New York Harbor, her master and chief medical officer radio: "No known or suspected quarantinable disease nor any prevalence of any contagious or highly infectious disease on board.

No commercial shipments of birds of the parrot family on board. . . ." Chief Akin then telephones (cost to the Government: 10(0 to the ship's agents who relay this message by radio (cost to the agents: $9), "Permission is granted ... to proceed without stopping at Quarantine. .

." Quarantinable diseases which prevent radio pratique are: cholera, leprosy, yellow fever, anthrax, typhus fever, smallpox, plague (bubonic, pneumonic or septicemic), parrot fever. In addition to those diseases, in which the Government has special interest, New York City will prevent radio pratique if a ship harbors chicken pox, diphtheria, dysentery (amebic or bacillary), epidemic encephalitis, German measles, measles, meningococcus meningitis, mumps, paratyphoid fever, infantile paralysis, scarlet fever, typhoid fever, or whooping cough. Only ships regularly in the following services may use radio pratique: between New York and European ports, between East and West coasts of the U. S. by way of the Panama Canal, between New York and the Canal, between New York and Bermuda or ports in the West Indies, and ships of such services which make seasonal cruises between New York and Bermuda or the West Indies.

*Also representatives of Collector of Customs, the Immigration Service, the New York Post Office, the Press.

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