Isolation and disinfection—but the old quarantine and fumigation under new names! Who of us has not sympathized with the traveler of the earlier days in the Levant, when he was condemned to days and weeks of detention in the barren lazaretto? And even at so comparatively recent a date as the pilgrimage recorded by Mark Twain in his “Innocents Abroad,” he states that the Italians found it more to their convenience to fumigate travelers than to wash themselves. How very different is a modern quarantine station, such as may be found near any of our more important ports on the Atlantic coast. If the health officer of the port finds a contagious disease upon board, he immediately removes the sick to the hospital, and keeps the well under supervision long enough to see if the disease has been communicated to any. He may keep them on shipboard; but more likely, if the ship must be disinfected, he removes them to the detention station, safely separated from the hospital. The steerage has been crowded, and there is need of disinfection of their persons and clothing. Under proper supervision, each is required to take a bath, for which abundant facilities are furnished; and while this is doing their clothing has been placed in the steam disinfecting apparatus, a partial vacuum secured, superheated steam introduced, the clothing thoroughly disinfected, a partial vacuum again produced, whereby the contents are rapidly dried, and they are ready to be put on again by the time the bath is completed. The luggage is treated in the same way, while the cargo is probably treated to a sulphur fumigation,—the sulphur being burned in furnaces and the fumes carried to all parts of the cargo through lines of hose. In the course of a very few days, at least, all but the sick can proceed on their journey without any risk of conveying the disease. Everything that has thus far been chronicled regarding the progress of sanitary science has related to the diminution of the death-rate and the prevention of disease. After all, is this worthy the telling? When one learns “how the other half lives,” or, with more restricted knowledge, realizes to a degree the intensity of the remark of a young Hebrew, replying to a command of a police officer to clean up, as related in “The Workers” by Professor Wykoff: “You tell us we’ve got to keep clean,” he answered in broken English, lifting his voice to a shout above the clatter of machines; “what time have we to keep clean, when it’s all we can do to get bread? Don’t talk to us about disease; it’s _bread_ we’re after, _bread_!”