intemperate, little fatality occurs as a rule, and little pitting or other trace of the disease is usually left after a few weeks. The law plainly requires physicians and heads of families to report all cases of smallpox or other communicable diseases to their respective county or municipal boards of health within the first twentyfour hours, and they shall obey the rules and regulations of such boards relating thereto, and ample penalties are provided for failure to do so. The law also gives such boards full authority to provide hospitals, physicians, nurses, guards and all other things needful in managing and stamping out the disease at the expense of the county or municipality, where the persons afflicted are indigent, and this authority has been sustained and even extended in frequent decisions of the Court of Appeals. It is greatly to be desired in the interest of economy and harmony, as well as because it is a matter of common concern, that the health and fiscal authorities shall work together handin hand, but it is important that the former should be advised as to their rights in the matter when a disagreement is unavoidable, and, in the presence of a grave public danger, not to hesitate in exercising them, When its true nature is recognized early smallpox is the easiest of all contagious diseases to stamp out. When it spreads beyond the first case, or, at most, beyond the first family, somebody has violated the law and is seriously to be blamed. All cases should be immediately and rigidly isolated, in the county or municipal hospital if possible, and the house in which the disease exists, or from which it was taken, should be flagged or placarded, and guarded, unless in trustworthy hands, until it has been systematically disinfected and officially released from quarantine. Every member of the household, and every other person who has been exposed to the disease, should be traced. out, vaccinated in three places, and kept under observation for sixteen days, or until the vaccinations have taken well. If any exposed person has gone away, or afterwards makes his escape, immediate notice of the facts should be sent to the health officer of the jurisdiction into which he has gone. The rules laid down appear easy and simple upon paper, but their effective enforcement when smallpox breaks out in a settlement of negroes, or the class of white people who neglect vaccination, and consequently have a monopoly of smallpox, and especially when the situation is complicated by ignorant or contentious doctors, and selfish business men, who vehemently assert that it is not smallpox, and a |