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in quarantine the whole of the Bombay Presidency owing to
the outbreak of plague within it, against the rest of India. In
paragraph 3 (iii) of the Home Department letter No. 1623-26,
dated June 1st, 1897,* addressed to the Maritime Governments,
it was noticed that the Venice Convention provided that the
modern principles of disinfection should be substituted for
the obsolete system of land quarantine, but, with a view to
the protection of countries which may find it difficult to thus
protect their borders, each of the Governments who are parties
to the Convention is at liberty to close its frontiers to travel-
lers and merchandise. The Convention also, while condemn-
ing land quarantine in general terms, permits Governments
to reserve to themselves the right to take special measures with
regard to certain classes of people specially-
A.-Gipsies and vagabonds.
B.-Emigrants and persons travelling or crossing the
frontier in large bodies.
10. Proceeding on the principles embodied in the Venice
Convention the Government of India have from time to time
expressed an opinion adverse to the establishment of cordons
designed to keep the population within an infected area and
have declined to agree to the general prohibition of the book-
ing of passengers by railway to or from particular places, or
to the prohibition of the booking of passengers travelling by
a particular class. The detention of the inmates of an infected
locality within the area of infection by means of a cordon
is apt to increase the virulence of the disease, and therefore
also the danger of its dissemination, by fostering the local
conditions which are a main cause of its development. Expe-
rience shows that ordinarily on the outbreak of plague in a
town of which part is infected and part is not, it is desirable,
concurrently with the removal to a segregation camp of the
inmates of the infected localities, to encourage the healthy
population to leave the infected area before the disease
becomes thoroughly diffused through it. But there may be
cases in which the area of infection being small it may be
possible to entirely evacuate it and to place the inmates of it
in isolation at a place in the near neighbourhood. A guard
may unobjectionably be utilized to keep the population under
medical supervision within the healthy area in which it is
determined to isolate them both with the object of prevent-
ing their return to the infected houses and also to minimise
the possibility of infection being carried elsewhere. In such
cases if proper arrangements are made for separate camps for
* Vide page 199.