294	Measures to prevent the	[ CHAP. X.
combined measures for the disinfection of the personal effects of
travellers likely to carry infection, for the supervision at their desti-
nation of travellers from infected districts, and generally for the
detection of plague cases on their occurring in any town or village in
the threatened provinces. The Government of India hoped that these
measures would protect the rest of India against the Bombay Presi-
dency with the least possible amount of interference with intercourse
and without avoidable hardship. The established fact that isolated
cases of plague are not difficult to stamp out if they are at once detected
and due precautions taken, lent additional force to this expectation,
which was on the whole justified by the result.
Proposals of the
Government of
Bombay for the
enforcement of
local land
quarantine.
In a telegram, dated the 17th March, the Government of Bombay,
whilst accepting the decision of the Government of India against the
proposal to impose general quarantine against the Bombay Presi-
dency, urged that land quarantine should be permitted at selected
places within the Presidency. They gave the following reasons.
In accordance with the custom of the country in dealing with
cholera, the inhabitants of healthy villages in the Thana and Surat
districts had already imposed quarantine against villages infected
with plague. In some towns and villages specially liable to infection
limited quarantine had been imposed with good results by District
Magistrates and Political Agents. Quarantine even if not thoroughly
effective checks large movements of people, and persons flying from
an area, where active remedial and disinfecting operations are anti-
cipated, avoid going to a town where quarantine has been imposed.
Quarantine need not be absolute, but it is specially important to
apply it to the class of people, who when they enter a town can
neither be traced nor depended on to give information of plague
among them. Medical inspection, though valuable, does not detect
cases that are only incubating, and the experience of the city of Bom-
bay had shown that cleansing operations cannot check plague, unless
accompanied by measures for the detection of all new cases-a proce-
dure requiring a larger staff than can be supplied in most country
towns. With regard to the stoppage of third class railway traffic,
the Government of Bombay stated that it would not be carried out
except in particular cases and for most cogent reasons. The Govern-
ment of India recognised that the villagers in threatened districts
might and should be allowed to protect themselves by voluntary
action, and that it was desirable to treat as suspicious persons who
on entering a town can neither be traced nor depended upon to give
information of plague among them. They were, however, entirely
averse from the imposition of compulsory quarantine between different