DISINFECTING SHED.

Showing Tank Above Containing Mercuric Chloride Solution. Heating Chambers Below.

338. Duties of the Officers of the Mississippi River Maritime Stations.

Acts of the Legislature establishing Quarantine at various times within the limits of this State created the office of Resident Physician for that service established on the Mississippi river; and invested it with certain duties entirely independent and beyond the rules and ordinances of any other body than itself, the General Assembly.

These laws put the entire control of quarantine on that river into the hands of that officer, by directing that no person should go on board of any vessel entering the Mississippi river without his consent-they also put the management, control and disposition of the sick on board in his hands; also invest him with power to engage and employ suitable persons to conduct quarantine operations and to fix their salaries; and to determine upon the sanitary condition of not only the vessels arriving at quarantine but the very ports from which they sailed. So absolute is the authority conferred upon this officer that the rules and regulations directed to be enacted by the Louisiana State Board of Health to carry out the principles of quarantine are but the specific details of the powers given to the Resident Physician.

Limitation of action of the Resident Physician is wisely placed in the hands of the Board of Health. Thus while it is the duty of the Resident Physician to decide what may be an infected vessel or port, it lays in the power of the Board of Health to direct him what measures of disinfection to employ and what time of detention to impose, on vessels arriving in such conditions or from such places. The acts of the Legislature direct that the Board of Health may enlarge or make more responsible his duties; but the specific instructions from the higher authority decidedly check the Board of Health in any measures which might hinder that sway imperatively necessary to him for the successful operation of his responsible duties.

In addition to the labors devolving upon him by direction of the written statute, there are those just as arduous in the unwritten law involving an estimate of human nature and a knowledge of human practices.

Every sick sailor desires to escape the real as well as supposed