Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States, Transmitted to Congress, With the Annual Message of the President, December 1, 1879

No. 417.
Mr. Hoffman to Mr. Evarts.

Legation of the United States,
St. Petersburg, April 4, 1879. (Received April 21.)

No. 79.]

Sir: Referring again to your dispatch, No. 43, inclosing copies of the “Regulations of the Treasury Department, to prevent the introduction of the epidemic disease now prevailing in Russia into the United States.”

The plague, so called, which appears to be rather a virulent form of typhus, has never extended beyond a small district, a few leagues square, in the extreme southeast of European Russia, and even there it has been effectually extirpated. In Northern Russia it has produced much less excitement than it did in the United States, and in St. Petersburg it forms no more a subject of conversation than if it had appeared at Rio Janeiro. It is thought and stated here that the exaggerated importance given it in Western Europe arose from commercial rather than from sanitary reasons.

* * * * * * *

Germany appears to have become satisfied that there is no longer any danger to be apprehended from this source, and the German Government has materially modified its order upon this subject. Under these circumstances I shall not communicate the “regulations” to the Russian Government unless instructed to do so.

I have the honor to forward to you herewith a translation of the order of the German Government above referred to, bearing date April 1, 1879.

I have the honor, &c.,

WICKHAM HOFFMAN.

[Inclosure 1 in No. 78.]

Berlin, April 1, 1879.

[Journal de Petersburg, April 3, 1879.]

The Reichsansiger publishes a decree of the minister of public worship (as chief of the department of medical affairs), and of the minister of commerce, as follows:

Considering that the epidemic of the plague may be considered, in general, as extirpated in the province of Astrakan, and that it may be admitted with certainty that it does not prevail in any other part of the territory of Russia, the decree of the 20th February, regarding the means of prevention against the introduction of the plague by the way of maritime traffic, is modified with the assent of the chancellor of the empire in this respect, that the sanitary inspection of ships is limited to those coming from the Black Sea and the Sea of Azoff, and is abolished for those coming from the Baltic, &c.