second order at Cadiz, Barcelona, Ferrol, Carthagena, and Passages, and a Lazaretto of the third order at every other commercial sea-port town of Spain. This title contains 114 articles.[1]
Title 4 contains 'precautions of sanitary police to be taken by vessels loading and unloading in the ports of Spain, and during the voyage at sea.' It consists of 28 articles, which, among other matters of equal importance, supply directions for preventing the embarkation of rats, cock-roaches, and other insects, and for destroying them. It also creates employment for the faculty, by directing that every vessel having a crew of sixteen persons, must carry a pupil in medicine and surgery, who has attended an hospital at least for one year; and every vessel, having a crew of thirty persons, a physician or surgeon of approved Latin.
Title 5, in 38 articles, describes the penalties to be inflicted on the infractors of the sanitary maritime service—fine-dismissal from employment—three years hard labor—death!
The third part, in 8 titles, treats of the sanitary terrestrial service. The first title, in fifty articles, contains 'rules for ascertaining the appearance or existence of any pestilential malady.' Here we have an enumeration of symptoms. The second title contains 'rules and measures for isolating, restraining, and extinguishing pestilential contagion in infected communities, and for preventing its propagation to the healthy.' It treats, in 72 articles, of the mode of isolating, and curing the sick, and of preserving the healthy; of burying the dead, expurgating furniture and effects, and purifying houses; of dispositions relating to persons, aliments, medicines, and police; of the means of preventing the propagation of contagion; of the establishment, government, and operations of Lazarettos of observation, cure, and expurgation; of the rules which ought to be observed in the cordons of these, and of infected communities; and of the expurgation and purification of those communities. What labor to obviate a chimera!
Title 3, in 47 articles, treats 'of Lazarettos of observation, cure and expurgation;' and, having brought the sanitary machinery to a due degree of perfection, concludes with talking confidently of 'extinguishing the cruel scourge of 'pestilential and contagious diseases.'
Title 4, in 42 articles, contains 'rules to be observed in the establishment and vigilance of military cordons, in an infected population.' Three lines of cordons! The French 'sanitary cordon' of 1821-2, will be immortal.
Title 5, in 63 articles, treats 'of the expurgation and purifica-
- ↑ The five Lazarettos of the second order had been abandoned in the project of the committee of public health of the Cortes of 1822, which notwithstanding was finally rejected.
