ABSTRACT
By 1851, the year of the Paris conference, quarantine on Malta had completed 25 years under the control of a Board of Health established by Britain. During that interval the system had been managed at a level which corresponded with the standards of the key lazarettos in mainland Europe. While this severity was sometimes to the detriment of British interests – as Admiral Stopford had made clear – the commercial activity of the island was no more impeded in foreign ports, by and large, than ships of other countries were inconvenienced in Malta. It was, of course, this reciprocated misery which the Paris conference was seeking to address, but it was actually a tribute to the Maltese Government that quarantine at Valletta was widely considered on a par with arrangements at Marseilles and Leghorn.
