Suggestions for the prevention and mitigation of epidemic and pestilential diseases, comprehending the abolition of quarantines and lazarettos : with some opportune remarks upon the danger of pestilence from scarcity intended to serve as an introduction to a work, entitled Researches in Turkey, concerning the plague, &c / by Charles Maclean.

  • Maclean, Charles, active 1788-1824.
Date:
[1817]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Suggestions for the prevention and mitigation of epidemic and pestilential diseases, comprehending the abolition of quarantines and lazarettos : with some opportune remarks upon the danger of pestilence from scarcity intended to serve as an introduction to a work, entitled Researches in Turkey, concerning the plague, &c / by Charles Maclean. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    produce an epidemic malady. It consequently depends upon the casual diminution of the purity of the air, (and it is of the greatest importance to note, that contagion can have nothing to do with the matter,1 *) whether we are to be afflicted with this additional Calamity. When we become acquainted with the true causes, as well principal as subordinate or collateral, upon which epidemic diseases depend, and with the nature of the adventitious causes (the conse¬ quences of the belief in the doctrine of contagion) which multiply their destructive effects, we shall readily perceive the reason why it would not be safe for any nation, even the most cultivated, and consequently, other things being equal, the least liable to those scourges, to consider itself as permanently exempt from the recur- rence of pestilential maladies,2. In countries far advanced in civilization and culture, indeed, it is seldom that the inferior or collateral causes of epidemic diseases, as famine, &c. occur with any considerable force; and, under these circumstances, it requires the presence of the principal cause, (which I shall prove, but, for the present, assume to be a deterio¬ rated state of the atmosphere,) operating, in a high degree, to pro¬ duce such pestilences as those which afflicted England in the course of the seventeenth century. Hence, for the last hundred and fifty years, although there have been many obscure epidemics, as the bills of mortality enable me to infer, which, however, have not been noted as such, we have, in this country, remained exempt from any palpable or destructive pestilence.3 And whilst it must be admitted, that the chances are, according to the same principles, greatly in favour of the continuance, with very rare interruption, of this happy exemption; it is, how¬ ever, no less obvious, that the subordinate or collateral causes being, as at present, operating with unusual force, a slighter mea¬ sure of the principal cause than under ordinary circumstances, would be sufficient to produce the deprecated effect. It is the part of wisdom to be prepared for every event. And 1 It would seem as if medical writers had no other idea of the cause of fever than contagion, or marsh miasma. When we come to investigate the true cause of epidemic diseases, these will be found to be almost equally imaginary. It will, then, appear as absurd to talk of marsh miasma, on the rock of Gibraltar, or on board a ship, as to talk, any where, of contagion, 1 I am here obliged, for the sake of illustration, to assume some things as known, which are only to be demonstrated in the work, announced in these pages. And, in the mean time, I have to request that the reader will give me credit for being able to prove what I deliberately assert. 3 I shall shew, that neither this long exemption, nor the repeated recurrence of plague in the seventeenth century, have depended, in any degree, upon the state of our intercourse with Turkey, or any other country, during these periods respectively.