[One hundred twenty years of China's health quarantine service].

China's health quarantine service, initiated in 1873, has experienced a long way of 120 years. This article focuses on the rapid development of all aspects in the quarantine construction of organization, profession and ideology, especially in P. R. China's period of reform. The number of quarantine service has increased from 17 seaport services to 192 services, including seaport, airport and land frontier services (up to the end of 1992). The professional quarantine works has expanded from simple quarantine inspection to comprehensive surveillance of communicable diseases, vector control, imported foodstuff supervision and examination etc. Significant contributions have been made to the prevention of the transmission of communicable diseases into the territory, the improvement of the sanitary condition of frontier ports and means of transportation. Frontier health quarantine is one of the strongest lookout posts of sanitation door of the country. It has become one of the major branches of preventive medicine and one of the key links of international health care cooperation. Health quarantine is being developing and strengthening for new and greater success for the realizatiion of the socialist modernization of our country.