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Show 1 THE NEWS AND THE QUARANTINE. 1 The News insists that all quarantine laws shall f bo obeyed and that if people neglect this obedi- ence they should be punished, and cries out in j this tone: "What is the use of legislation if it remains a dead letter? If laws are not vitalized by the willing action of the people for whom they I are intended they should be made very lively for , those who defy them." Well, well, this frcm the News. Really it is refreshing. "De sun do move." But is the new-found zeal of the News really on solid ground? It fought a measure for compulsory compul-sory vaccination to a finish on the ground chiefly that it was an infringement on the personal liberie liber-ie ty of the citizen. Now if a citizen has the right j to do all he can to contract smallpox has he not I also the personal right to spread it? Ought not the old rule that in order to create and maintain civilized society all members of society must sur-I sur-I ' render some of their original rights, to be set j aside? If it is an outrage to compel a person j to be vaccinated that his neighbor's health I through him may not be put in jeopardy, is it not an outrage to compel that same individual to com- ply with just and decent rules where the health I of others is directly concerned? The News should keep in mind that a thorough bath would distress j very many of its dupes vastly more than would j that terrible "surgical operation" which the News so much abhors. Would not the other rule of the News be more humane, that rule which advises a man or woman if he or she is possessed of any sinister knowledge about himself or herself or a t neighbor, to keep his or her mouth shut? Cannot the News see that when it becomes a j strict constructionist it is liable to open a whole ( Pandora box of evil upon this people? ( The News intimates that its contemporaries while demanding that people should be vaccinated are silent about warning the people to obey the 1 instructions of the Board of Health and the law regarding quarantine. When the old Guard was in a close place, history says its commander cried out, "The Guard dies, it never surrenders." In a close place the News unconsciously begins to crack jokes. The News knows the presence of smallpox small-pox here now is due directly to its malicious ad- ; vice to the dupes who read the News to resist all attempted invasions upon their personal liberty, and now it blooms out the "only" champion of enforcing a strict quarantine against contagious l diseases, and those who are brought in contact with the sick and claims a monopoly upon this advocacy. There is where the joke comes in for some of us besought that very same things more than twenty years ago and for quite nve years during which the News sneered and scoffed at us and told the people that if any were sick to "call ' , in the Elders and let them lay hands upon them and then if they recovered it was well, and if they died still it was well," and went so far as to get , a learned physician to testify in court that "dirt ', was healthy." So now when it demands a thor- ough enforcement of the quarantine laws, some ; of us laugh. But it is a good thing, neverthe- less, and we hope the News will have an editorial I on that theme with scare heads every other day, for the News is the only journal that some thousands thou-sands of dupes in this region will have read to I them. That the contagion in more than one form is abroad here is due primarily to the malicious I advice of the News, and secondly to the shameful I and criminal defiance of the simple demands which science, experience and common decency dictate shall govern those who attend upon people peo-ple who are ill of such diseases. Our belief is that there should be organized a quarantine I patrol, with authority to arrest every person who is so careless of the lives of others as to carry about on their own person the germs of contagion. conta-gion. 1 |