s broadly as
follows, though the procedure varies a good deal in different
countries:--Ships arriving from infected ports are inspected, and if
healthy are not detained, but bilge-water and drinking-water are
evacuated, and persons landing may be placed under medical supervision
without detention; infected ships are detained only for purposes of
disinfection; persons suffering from cholera are removed to hospital;
other persons landing from an infected ship are placed under medical
observation, which may mean detention for five days from the last case,
or, as in Great Britain, supervision in their own homes, for which
purpose they give their names and places of destination before landing.
All goods are freed from restrictions, except rags and articles believed
to be contaminated by cholera matters. By land, passengers from infected
places are similarly inspected at the frontiers and their luggage
"disinfected"--in all cases a pious ceremony of no practical value,
involving a short but often a vexatious delay; only those found
suffering from cholera can be detained. Each nation is pledged to notify
the others of the existence within its own borders of a "foyer" of
cholera, by which is meant a focus or centre of infection. The precise
interpretation of the term is left to each government, and is treated in
a rather elastic fashion by some, but it is generally understood to
imply the occurrence of non-imported cases in such a manner as to point
to the local presence of infection. The question of guarding Europe
generally from the danger of diffusion by pilgrims through the Red Sea
was settled at another conference held in Paris in 1894. The provisions
agreed on included the inspection of pilgrims at ports of departure,
detention of infected or suspected persons, and supervision of pilgrim
ships and of pilgrims proceeding overland to Mecca.

The substitution of the procedure above described for the old measures
of quarantine and other still more drastic interferences with traffic
presupposes the existence of a sanitary service and fairly good sanitary
conditions if cholera is to be effectually prevented. No doubt if
sanitation were perfect in any place or country, cholera, along with
many other diseases, might there be ignored, but sanitation is not
perfect anywhere, and therefore it requires to be supplemented by a
system of notification with prompt segregation of the sick and
destruction of infective material. These thing