Madden's Travels in Turkey, fyc. 121 



some length before our readers. The author had some expe- 

 rience of the plague, both at Constantinople and in Candia, 

 but his notions of it were then confused, sometimes believing 

 it to be contagious, sometimes infectious, and sometimes 

 neither the one nor the other. On his arrival at Alexandria he 

 found the disorder very rife ; the natives were perishing at 

 the rate of eighteen per day, and few days passed over without 

 the death of an European. 



" For so small a population as that of Alexandria, say sixteen 

 thousand souls, the mortality was considerable : every house was 

 shut up, the servants were not suffered to go out, money was passed 

 through vinegar before it was touched, letters were smoked, papers 

 were handled with tongs, passengers in the streets poked unwary 

 strangers with their sticks, to avoid communication, people thronged 

 round the doctors' shops to know how many died in the night: the 

 plague was discussed at breakfast, contagion was described at din- 

 ner, buboes and carbuncles (horrescoreferens !) were our themes at 

 supper. The laws of infection were handled by young ladies in 

 the drawing-room ; * a cat could communicate the plague, but a 

 dog was less dangerous ; an ass was a pestiferous animal, but a 

 horse was non-contagious. Fresh bread was highly susceptible, 

 but butchers' meat was non-productive/ If you looked at a man, 

 he felt his groin; if you complained of a headach, there was a 

 general flight; if you went abroad with a sallow cheek, the people 

 fled in all directions ; if you touched the skirt of a Christian's coat, 

 you raised his choler : and if you talked of M'Lean, your intellect 

 was suspected to be impaired." 



The author visited the plague hospital daily, sometimes 

 taking with him his host, Mr. Casey, whose fears he had some- 

 how contrived to overcome. 



" The pesthouse consists of several small rooms, with a grated 

 window opposite the door facing the east, as if intended for receiv- 

 ing the poisonous wind of the desert. There is neither chair nor 

 table in this dungeon ; the sole furniture is a cane bed, called a 

 cafass, with a mattress, and a sheet, which serves for a shroud a 

 little later. The door is generally locked on the unhappy patient, 

 an Arab attendant sits smoking his pipe outside, and very rarely 

 enters to moisten the burning lips of the sufferer, or to lessen the 

 terror of his solitary confinement ; once a day the Italian doctor 

 enters the room ; orders a decoction of marshmallows, or elder- 

 flower water, and then departs. Of all human horrors, earth has 

 nothing to compare with the dismay depicted on the features of the 

 sick, in these dreadful receptacles of pestilence ! 



We would have wished to spare our readers a medical descrip- 

 tion of the plague, but the history which Mr. Madden gives of 

 it, as occurring in his own servant, is so striking, and so illustra- 



