Establishment of CHAP. 358. AN ACT establishing a quarantine and defining the qualifications, duties and powers of the health officer for the harbor and port of New York. PASSED April 29, 1863; three-fifths being present. The People of the State of New York, represented in Senate and Assembly, do enact as follows: $1 Quarantine for the protection of the public health, quarantine, according to the provisions of this act, is hereby authorized, required and established in and for the port of New York for all vessels, their crews, passengers, equipage, cargoes and other property on board of the same, arriving thereat from other ports. Of what to consist. Structures. Mode of construction. Capacity. Location. Floating hospital. 31 How. P. R., 394. $ 2. The quarantine establishment shall consist of: first, warehouses, wet-docks and wharves; second, anchorage for vessels; third, floating hospital; fourth, boarding station; fifth, burying-ground; sixth, residence for officers and men. $3. The warehouses, wet-docks and wharves, together with appropriate appurtenances for unlading and storing cargoes, and such facilities as will enable merchants to overhaul and refit vessels while in quarantine, shall be constructed at such expense and in such place in the lower bay of New York, not on Staten Island, Long Island or Coney Island, as the quarantine commissioners may determine, with the approval of the commissioners of the land-office. S4. The warehouses shall be of such capacity only as will secure the best natural ventilation consistent with security for merchandise, but in the aggregate they shall be of a capacity equal to the storage of fifty medium-sized cargoes; and they shall have connected with them apartments with suitable appliances for special disinfection by forced ventilation, refrigeration, high steam, dry heat and chemical disinfection. S5. The wharves shall be constructed with due regard to safety to and protection for vessels, and sufficiently extensive to admit of the safe moorage of at least four vessels of the largest size at the same time. There shall be two wet-docks, each one capable of admitting a ship of the largest size. $6. The anchorage for vessels under quarantine shall be in the lower bay, distant not less than two miles from the nearest shore, and within an area to be designated by buoys by the quarantine commissioners and health officer. $ 7. The floating hospital shall be constructed with special reference to the purposes of a hospital, and with a capacity sufficient to accommodate one hundred patients. From the first day of May to the first day of November that floating hospital shall be anchored in the lower bay, not less than two miles distant from the nearest portion of the quarantine anchorage and from the nearest shore. From the first day of November to the first day of May the floating hospital may be moored at the quarantine wharves or other secure place, subject to the discretion of the commissioners of quarantine. place. $8. The boarding station for infected vessels shall consist Boarding of the vessel at present used as a floating hospital, or such other vessel as may hereafter be provided, to be anchored in such proximity to the floating hospital and the channel as will afford the greatest dispatch in boarding and directing vessels as soon as practicable after arrival; and shall be provided with all necessary appurtenances for personal cleanliness and the purification of personal baggage. quarantine. Amended, see Laws of 1865, chap. 592, post p. 536. $9. Vessels arriving at the port New York shall be sub- Period of ject to quarantine, as follows: First, All vessels from any place where disease subject to quarantine existed at the time of their departure, or which shall have arrived at any such place and proceeded thence to New York, or on board of which, during the voyage, any case of such disease shall have occurred, arriving between the first day of April and the first day of November, shall remain at quarantine for at least thirty days after their arrival, and at least twenty days after their cargo shall have been discharged, and shall perform such and further quarantine as the quarantine commissioners may prescribe, unless the health officer, with the approval of the quarantine commissioners, shall sooner grant a permit for said vessel or cargo, or both, to proceed. Second, From any place (including islands) in Asia, Africa, or the Mediterranean, or from any of the West Indies, Bahama, Bermuda or Western Islands, or from any place in America in the ordinary passage from which they pass south of Cape Henlopen, and all vessels on board of which, during the voyage or while at the port of their departure, any person shall have been sick, arriving between the first day of April and the first day of November, and all vessels from a foreign port, not embraced in the first subdivision of this section, shall, on their arrival at the quarantine ground, be subject to visitation by the health officer, but shall not be detained beyond the time requisite for due examination and observation, unless they shall have had on board during the voyage some case of quarantinable disease, in which case they shall be subject to such quarantine and regulations as the health officer and the quarantine commissioners may prescribe. Third, All vessels embraced in the foregoing provisions which are navigated by steam, shall be subject only to such length of quarantine and regulations as the health officer shall enjoin, unless they shall have had on board during the voyage some case of quarantinable disease, in which case they shall be subject to such quarantine as the health officer and the quarantine commissioners shall prescribe. 15 tion. Vaccina- S 10. Persons with sufficient evidence of effective vaccination, and known to have been recently exposed to small pox, shall be vaccinated as soon as practicable, and detained until the vaccinia shall have taken effect. No other well persons shall be detained in quarantine any longer than necessary to secure cleanliness. Such vaccination and disposal of persons vaccinated shall be made under regulations to be fixed by the quarantine commissioners and health officer. Persons having small pox shall be disposed of in the same manner as is done under existing laws. Diseases subject to S 11. The only disease against which quarantine shall apply quarantine. are yellow fever, cholera, typhus or ship fever and small pox, and any new disease not now known, of a contagious, infectious, or pestilential nature, at the discretion of the quarantine commissioners and health officer. Sanitary measures. Ib. lb. Ib. S 12. For the purpose of sanitary measures, merchandise shall be arranged in three classes: 1. Merchandise to be submitted to an obligatory quarantine and to purification. 2. Merchandise subject to an optional quarantine. And The first class comprises clothing, personal baggage and dunnage, rags, paper rags, hides, skins, feathers, hair and all other remains of animals, cotton, hemp and woolens. The second class comprehends sugar, silks and linen and cattle. The third class comprehends all merchandise not enumerated in the other two classes. S 13. With existing quarantinable disease on board, or if there have been any such disease on board within the ten days last preceding, merchandise of the first class shall be landed at the quarantine warehouse. Merchandise of the second class may be admitted to pratique immediately, or transferred to the warehouses, according to circumstances, at the option of the health officer, with due regard to the sanitary conditions of the port. Merchandise of the third class shall be declared free, and admitted without unnecessary delay. $ 14. In all cases where there has been quarantinable disease on board during the voyage, letters and papers shall be submitted to the usual purifications, but with such precautions as not to affect their legibility; articles of merchandise or other things not subject to purifying measures in an envelope officially sealed shall be immediately admitted to pratique, whatever may be the condition of the vessel; and if the envelope is of a substance considered as optional, its admission shall be equally optional. $15. If a vessel though not having had during the voyage any case of quarantinable disease, yet be found in a condition which the health officer shall deem dangerous to the public health, the vessel and cargo shall be detained until the case shall have been considered; the decision of the health officer, however, in all such cases, shall be rendered within twenty four hours. Vessels in an unhealthy state, whether there has been sickness on board or not, shall not be allowed pratique until they shall have been broken out, duly cleansed and ventilated. measures. S 16. If, in the judgment of the health officer, a vessel Sanitary require it, he may order the following sanitary measures: Baths and other bodily care for the persons; washing or other disinfecting means for clothing; displacement of merchandise on board or complete breaking out; subjection to high steam, incineration or submersion at a distance below the surface of the water, for infected articles; the destruction of tainted or spoiled food or beverages; the complete ejection of water; thorough cleansing of the hold, and the disinfection of the well. In short, the complete purification of the vessel in all her parts by the use of steam, fumigation, force pumps, rubbing or scraping, and finally sending to quarantine anchorage until disinfection be perfected. Whenever these divers operations are necessary, they shall always be executed before admission to pratique. $ 17. Admission to pratique shall be preceded by as many I. visits to the vessel as the health officer may judge necessary. health $ 18. No vessel shall be put in quarantine without a stated Decision of decision of the health officer, and the captain or master of the officer. vessel shall be informed thereof immediately after his decision. Amended, see Laws of 1865, chap. 592, post p. 536. return to $19. A vessel shall have the right, before breaking bulk, Vesselsmay of putting to sea, in preference to being quarantined; in the sea. exercise of this right, if the vessel have not arrived at her port of destination, the bill of health shall be returned; the health officer, however, shall mention upon said bill the length and circumstances of the detention, and the condition of the vessel upon reputting to sea; but before the exercise of this right, the health officer must satisfy himself that the sick of such vessel will be taken care of for the remainder of the voyage, and take care of such sick as prefer to remain. sons and $20. On the arrival of infected vessels, all well persons well pershall have their freedom as soon as possible, consistently with sick persons the foregoing regulations; sick persons shall be immediately transferred to the floating hospital, or other hospitals appropriated for their reception, and the vessel unladen, purified, and admitted to pratique as soon as possible. All merchandise shall be placed in the warehouses, and there freely exposed to the air, and moved from time to time, to insure its perfect ventilation. In no case shall persons sick with different diseases be put in the same hospital. of merchan $21. Merchandise coming from different vessels and places, Disposition and at diferent times in quarantine, shall be kept separate, dise. and placed as much as practicable in different warehouses. $22. Merchandise shall be submitted to such measures of Purification purification as the health officer shall judge necessary; no putrified animal substances, or substances likely to putrify, thereof. Clothes and dunnage. Regulations for hospital. Appoint. ment of cer. shall be admitted into the warehouses; all such substances shall be rendered innoxious or destroyed. $23. The clothes and dunnage contaminated with infection of different diseases, shall be purified in different places. S24. The floating hospital shall, from the first day of April to the first day of November, be appropriated exclusively to the care of persons sick with yellow fever; from the first day of November to the first day of April, the floating hospitals may be used for the care of typhus or ship fever, and until permanent provision shall be otherwise made by law, small pox patients shall be sent to and supported as at present at Blackwell's Island, and typhus or ship fever patients shall be sent to and supported as at present at Ward's Island, and cholera patients shall be provided for by the commissioners of quarantine, in such manner as they may determine and occasion shall demand. $ 25. A health officer for the port of New York shall be health of nominated by the governor and appointed by him with the consent of the senate, and shall hold his office for the term of two years and until a successor in such office shall be duly qualified; provided, however, that no one shall be appointed a health officer except a doctor of medicine of good standing, and of at least ten years' experience in the practice of his profession, and who shall also be practically familiar with the diseases subject, by this act, to quarantine; nothing in this section contained shall authorize the governor to appoint a health officer during the recess of the senate, except in case of a vacancy by death or resignation. Duties thereof. S 26. It shall be the duty of the health officer to reside at such convenient place for the boarding of vessels as the commissioners of quarantine may determine, and to have the general superintendence and control of the quarantine establishment, and the care and treatment of the sick, and to carry out all the provisions of this act; and he shall have power: 1. To administer oaths and take affidavits in all examinations prescribed by this act, and in relation to any alleged violation of quarantine law or regulation; such oaths to have the like validity and effect as oaths administered by a commissioner of deeds. 2. At all times to call upon any of the police force of the Metropolitan police district, to a number not exceeding ten, to aid him upon any necessary emergency in enforcing the powers and duties conferred upon him by this act, and it shall thereupon become the duty of any such member of the police force so called upon to obey him; but such service shall not continue longer than twenty-four hours. Amended by Laws of 1865, chap. 592, post p. 537. 3. To direct in writing any constable or other citizen to pursue and apprehend any person who shall violate any quarantine law or regulation, or who shall obstruct the health officer in the performance of his duty, and deliver him over to the said officer to be detained at quarantine until discharged |