124 Madden's Travels in Turkey, fyc. 



cleansed. Dead dogs, cats, and rats, are constantly putre- 

 fying there. The carrion of camels and asses may be seen 

 lying in the great thoroughfares. The Turks seldom change their 

 linen, and in spite of their daily ablutions, are, in reality, a 

 very dirty people. In every town of the Levant the Jewish 

 quarter is the first affected by plague, and there every descrip- 

 tion of animal putrefaction is, par excellence, going forward. 

 We mast do the author the justice to say, however, that he 

 does not overlook the facts that seem to associate the plague 

 with some condition of the soil. " It ceases," he tells us (p. 

 283), " when the inundation is established, and begins when 

 the lands have been drained." This he attempts to explain 

 by saying that the atmosphere is thereby rendered a better 

 recipient of the pestilential effluvia which have their origin else- 

 where ; but we can hardly go along with him in this refine- 

 ment. To all this theory, however, is appended the following 

 very philosophical reflection : — 



" I am endeavouring to illustrate this scourge of the Levant by 

 facts, for I disclaim all theories. In a science, like that of medicine, 

 where there are no general rules, there can be no unerring- and 

 universal principles ; and, above all, in an anomalous disease, like 

 that of plague, he who soars into the clouds to analyze the float- 

 ing particles of miasma; to search after the causes of the fomes, 

 and not to study its effects ; to prove that the disease be infectious 

 only, or contagious only ; taken only by the breath, or only by the 

 touch ; to waste research and learning on mere terms ; cavilling 

 about distinctions between endemics and epidemics, but never 

 turning attention to the treatment of the disease ; that man, I say, 

 may acquire notoriety, by the novelty or ingenuity of his theories, 

 but he is not likely to lessen the mortality of the disorder." 



The opinions which the author has been led to entertain on 

 the treatment of the plague may be summed up in a few words. 

 He condemns bleeding, and all measures of depletion, whilst 

 he places the highest confidence in strong stimulants, diffusible 

 and permanent. Wine and brandy were his sheet anchors. 

 These he gave from the first moment the patient came under 

 his care, even though the eye was suffused, the cheek flushed, 

 and the skin dry. The first day he gave his brandy and water, 

 one-third spirit; the second day he made it half and half; on 

 the third day he contented himself generally with keeping up 

 the excitement by strong Cyprus wine. If the patient live to 

 the sixth day, he is very likely to recover. The third is that of 

 greatest danger. By this treatment (with some other items of 

 minor importance) he saved, in Candia, five patients out of 

 nine. Every thing, however, he allows, depends on early 



