Quarantine - Coastal Areas
Did quarantine work? The need for quarantine, to keep people in one place to stop them spreading disease, became obvious in the 1830’s cholera epidemics. Several thousand Canadians from Quebec City up to Kingston on Lake Ontario died after catching cholera from immigrants. Curiously, no one has researched the question, did quarantine work in 1847?Quarantine stations on Grosse Isle (Quebec), Partridge Island (New Brunswick), Miramichi (N.B.), and Middle Island (Nova Scotia) were operating in 1847. On Grosse Isle, the largest quarantine station, the hospital lists show that 9,568 had dysentery, cholera or smallpox, and of them, 3,238 died. This evidence can be used to argue that Canadians were shielded from disease, and some were helped to recovery because of quarantine. History, the way we write about the past, is a debate, not a one-sided story. Some 21,702 immigrants had to be treated in hospital after leaving Grosse Isle in Quebec City, Montreal, Bytown (Ottawa), Kingston, St. John (St. Jean, Quebec), and Toronto. Far more immigrants died in those places than on Grosse Isle. Some Canadians such as the Mayor of Montreal and the Bishop of Toronto also died. Consequently, we can ask if quarantine worked. The medical techniques of quarantine in 1847 might have added to the deaths. Ships had to wait at Grosse Isle, sometimes for weeks before inspection to see which immigrants were to be quarantined. In the intense heat, disease spread on the ships. People claimed that they could smell the immigrant ships a mile or more upwind. Had immigrants been allowed to disembark immediately, many more might have been saved. Doctors used a small stick to look in people’s mouths for disease. They used the same stick over and over. Think what that does! Use our modern knowledge. Captain Wilson, who moved immigrants upstream in steamboats thought that the delays at Grosse Isle were criminal and caused sickness in the intense heat of an unusually hot summer. Search the evidence about quarantine. You might find some forgotten aspect about this time. How did they treat people then? Compare then and now. Did quarantine work a little, well, or badly? Create your own questions as you re-search the evidence from 1847. |
|
|