Plague, a contagious disease / [Anon].

  • Gooch, Robert, 1784-1830
Date:
[1825]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Plague, a contagious disease / [Anon]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    act on the supposition that a disease is contagious, although the evidence for it is far short of demonstration—we may now go on to consider whether these signs are discoverable in the history of the plague in a sufficient degree to make it proper for us to act with respect to it on that supposition. Now whoever will carefully examine the accounts of the plague transmitted to us by those who have witnessed its ravages, will find ample evidence of the following truths:—1st. That it is most liable to affect those persons who approach patients affected with it, and that in proportion to the nearness of the approach: 2dly, that those who avoid all intercourse with persons affected Math the plague, generally escape the disease, and that in proportion to the care with which they avoid it. There are feMr facts indeed in medical history for which there is such a mass of evidence as these; or on which the experience of past and present times is so uniform. The most remarkable examples are afforded by the introduction of the plague into countries which had long been free from it, in con¬ sequence of intercourse with places in M'hich it was then raging. The clearness with which this intercourse has been often traced is truly wonderful, considering the many temptations which travellers or mariners coming from countries infected Math the plague have to clandestine intercourse. Of such histories there are so many on record, that the difficulty is M'hich to select: we will begin Math the plague at Marseilles, in 1720. For seventy years the plague had never visited this maritime city, when, on the 25th May, 1720, a vessel sailed into the har¬ bour, under the following circumstances: She had left Seyde, in Syria, on the 31st of January, with a clean bill of health, but the plague had broken out a few days after her departure, and she had called at Tripoli, not far from Seyde, where she took in some Turkish passengers. During the passage, one of the Turks died, after an illness of a few days. Tm^o sailors attempted to heave the corpse overboard, but before they had time to do so, the captain called them away, and ordered it to be done by the comrades of the deceased. In the course of a few days the two sailors w'ho had touched the corpse fell sick, and speedily died. Soon after this, two others of the crew, one the surgeon of the vessel, who of course had attended the sick, were attacked with the same symptoms, and died. These occurrences so alarmed the captain, that he shut himself up in the poop during the rest of the voyage. Three other sailors subsequently fell ill in the same way. Mere put ashore at Leghorn, and died there; the physician and surgeons of the infirmary certifying that their disease had been a pestilential fever. The vessel arrived at Marseilles, and the crew and cargo were landed at the lazzaretto. Soon afterwards, the disease