WITH A VIEW TO THE PREVENTION OF PLAGUE. 313 



practice of the officer who goes round to make an inventory of the effects of tra- 

 vellers in quarantine, to seat himself when doing so at the wooden table, and write 

 where the traveller in quarantine, the instant before, may have been writing, and 

 the probability is, that he will use the chair from which the traveller may have 

 risen just before, without subjecting himself to quarantine, the table and chair 

 being entirely of wood. 



5. In passing the Porto di Ferro, a rapid of the Danube so called, a little be- 

 low Orsova, where it is necessary for the passengers to land and walk a certain 

 distance, they are accompanied by an armed guardiano, to prevent all communi- 

 cation on their part. He makes no objection to their touching stones or plants, 

 and will willingly receive a glass of wine or a piece of bread from the boat ; but 

 is most cautious that no one of the party touch the rope by which the boat is 

 tracked, that being a so-called susceptible article, and capable, it is supposed, of 

 receiving and imparting contagion. 



6. A gentleman, a native of the country, visits a friend in quarantine in the 

 lazaretto just mentioned. They meet in the open air, in a little yard belonging to 

 the traveller's apartment, in which, on a line, some of his clothes are suspended 

 for depuration, according to the rules of the lazaretto. The tassel of the cap of 

 the visitor comes in contact with one of them ; with the end of his stick he casts 

 his cap off his head ; but this does not save him from the penalty he dreaded. 

 The guardiano, who witnessed the contact, places him instantly in quarantine, 

 and for the same period as his friend, with whom he is asserted to have commu- 

 nicated by the contact of susceptible articles. He might, unquestioned, and with 

 impunity, have taken his friend's stick with him into the adjoining town, or have 

 drank out of the glass used by his friend, or have touched twenty other things in 

 common, provided they did not belong to the list of susceptible articles. 



7. When cases of plague were in the lazaretto of Constantinople last summer, 

 after visiting them, one of the official authorities present, on taking leave, re- 

 quested of the medical man in attendance on the plague patients a little leaf-tobacco 

 to make a cigar. The medical man, in rigid quarantine, placed the tobacco on a 

 stone and withdrew, and the official man in pratique instantly took it up for use ; 

 and, to a question as to the propriety of so doing, replied it was quite in rule and 

 safe, leaf-tobacco not being a susceptible article. 



8. Money at this time, when plague was actually in the lazaretto, imported 

 from Alexandria, was not allowed to be received from those in quarantine till it 

 had been passed through water. A perforated iron ladle received the money, in 

 which it was dipt in a bucket of water, and instantly delivered to the person re- 

 quiring payment in pratique. The immersion might have been for two or three 

 seconds. 



After witnessing this, I applied animal matters, minute quantifies hardly 

 perceptible, to polished steel and glass, immersed them in water for a quarter of 



