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suffering or suspected to be suffering from plague, and the
detention of the vessel from which such persons have been
removed for a period of seven days, after the lapse of which
the vessel may proceed if no fresh case has occurred.
(b) In order that the obligations imposed by the Con-
vention may be fulfilled at an infected port it is essential that
the medical inspection and disinfection should be conducted
exactly in the manner prescribed by the Regulations and
summarized above. The Government of India consider that
it is also desirable that all non-professional attendants and
relatives of any persons, who on examination appear to be
suffering from plague, shall be prevented from embarking.
If after the medical examination has been completed and all
the passengers and crew are on board, a case of plague occurs,
the patient and his non-professional attendants and relations
must be landed and isolated on the first opportunity. The
ship will then become an infected vessel within the definition
given below in paragraph 7. Although the ports of Madras
and Calcutta are not infected, the Local Governments have,
with the approval of the Government of India, made the
special rules for medical inspection referred to above, and, in
the opinion of the Governor-General in Council, it is desir-
able that they should be assimilated, in the case of vessels
sailing for ports out of India, as far as possible to those which
will, under the terms of the Convention, have to be adopted
at the infected ports of the Bombay Presidency.
(c) I am to request that the rules issued by the Govern-
ment of Madras may be altered in accordance with these
instructions.
6.  The rules regarding pilgrim-ships which form the next
portion of the Regulations will, as stated in paragraph 3 above,
be dealt with in a separate communication.
7.  The  Regulations for the control of the general traffic
in the Red Sea and the Suez Canal are based on the threefold
classification of ships into healthy,  suspected and infected
adopted in the Venice Convention of  1892, with the modifi-
cations rendered necessary owing to the period of incubation
in the case of plague having been fixed at 10 days.
(a) Healthy vessels are those which have left an in-
fected port for ten days or more and have had no case of
plague on board; suspected vessels are those on which, though
cases of plague have occurred, no fresh case has occurred
within twelve days; and infected vessels are those on which
plague has been present within twelve days of arrival.
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