Observations on the oriental plague, and on quarantines, as a means of arresting its progress, addressed to the British Association of Science ... 1838 / [Sir John Bowring].

  • Bowring, John, 1792-1872
Date:
1838
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Observations on the oriental plague, and on quarantines, as a means of arresting its progress, addressed to the British Association of Science ... 1838 / [Sir John Bowring]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    been used for plague patients was unscrupulously employed for patients who were the subjects of other disorders, and that no instance had occurred of the communication of the plague by the employment of the linen of the sufferers from plague.* In fact, so far from the plague being easily communicable, nothing has been found so difficult as to communicate it. Could it be traced to a specific virus, some means might possibly be taken to control its progress. But, the impossi¬ bility of ascertaining the immediate cause of propagation is the great embarrassment of the whole question. A case or two of its apparent communication by inoculation has oc¬ curred in the localities of its endemic existence; but no case has come to my knowledge where inoculation has commu¬ nicated the plague out of the infected locality. Dr. Bulard, who has, of late, excited much attention by his attempt to introduce Bazzarettos into Constantinople, an attempt from which he is now disassociated in consequence of a misunder¬ standing as to the amount of his own pecuniary recompense, did, while in Egypt, wear, for I believe twenty-four hours, the garments of persons who had died of the plague without being attacked.^ Dr. Bulard, during the period of the dis¬ cussions as to the Lazzaret establishments in Constantinople, * M. Bulard says, that « in the Esbekier Hospital at Cairo (which is under the direction of Europeans), the same beds, linen, shirts, drawers, and sheets, which during six months had been employed for from 2,000 to 3,000 plague patients, were used for general purposes; for those suffering from fever, wounds, ophthalmia, dysentery, syphilis, without other precau¬ tion than simple washing in water, without alkali or soap. “ Our own linen was left an hour in water, and ironed by laundresses ; while aprons were lying about the place impregnated and almost wholly covered with the pus of buboes, the serus of carbuncles and pestiferous blood.”—Peste. f Dr. Bulard’s account of himself is as follows:—“I have struggled with the plague for five years. I have lived at different times, and during several months, amidst the cries of suffering thousands of plague-subjects, and the emanations from their dead bodies. I have dissected 300 plague- corpses, and have treated 2,000 plague cases. Peste. N. 4.