1825.] 
For the Monthly Magazine. 
An Inquiry into the Dancer of In- 
~ porTING the Pracur by holding Com- 
~ MFRCIAL INTERCOURSE with INFECTED 
’ Countrirs. By Thomas Jarrold, 
~ M.D.,— Read in the Literary end Phi- 
* losophical Society of Manchester. 
2 te dread of ‘the return ‘of ’the 
plague, although it Nas not visited 
this country ‘during: more than’ a, cen- 
tury and a ‘halfjis still ‘felt; and» will 
continue to’be felt as long as its origin 
is involved in obscurity, and its’ pro- 
gress attributed to contagion. To 
assert that it is not infectious, is op- 
posed, in the public mind, by the records 
of its character. To assert that it has 
left the island, is opposed by the fact of 
its having once existed here. Its na- 
ture and its source being alike shrouded 
in obscurity, to aid in ascertaining the 
one, and in tracifig ‘the other, is the 
object of the present essay. 
A full population is in no region of 
the globe an occasion of pestilence; on 
the contrary, ‘by rendering necessary 
the cultivation of the soil, by provoking 
that collision of interests, which creatés 
and diffusés’ knowledge, civilization is 
promoted; and civilization is an anti- 
dote against pestilence : it cireumseribes 
its influence, or it dries up its source. 
The plague does not. prevail in a well 
regulated country. It has not prevailed 
in China, although that country might 
be regarded as subject to it from the 
nature of its Climate. It has not prevail- 
ed, for more than a century, ‘in France, 
or Hollatid,’ or~ Italy, ‘or’ England 
though in each of these countries: it 
once had ‘its ‘seat: No country: in- 
creases in population where the plague 
exists; for it not only sweeps off mul- 
titudes by its own influence, but other 
diseases precede it, or follow in its 
train, and are created by, or derive force 
from the corrupted atmosphere which 
constantly prevails in countries visited 
by this disease. The sweating sickness, 
in the estimation of Dr. Méad, was oc- 
casioned by the same cause, if it was 
not a mitigated form of the plague. 
In the view I take of the subject, the 
plague is not a natural ‘and necessary, 
but an acquired disease: the creature 
of circumstances, over which man has 
eontrol. Its source is admitted to be 
in a neglected but luxuriant soil, united 
to air highly corrupted, in the dwellings 
of the depraved or indolent. The bogs 
and swamps of one’ country give’ birth 
to agues; of another, to the cholera 
morbus; of another, to the yellow 
Mowruty Mac. No. 411. 
Non- Contagion of Plague. 
513° 
fever; and, in every country, poverty 
‘and wretchedness occasion fevers of 
various types: but the plague is only 
engendered when a fertile soil is uncul-: 
tivated, and a civilized people oppres- 
sed; it is an evidence. of misery, the 
fruit of misrule. No disease résembles 
it,’ for none depend on so many causes. 
It does not résemblé some’ epidemics, 
in moving from continent to continent, 
—deriving its origin in China, and’ pro- 
ceeding onward ‘to the north ‘of Eu- 
rope, It’ does not resemble others in 
attacking, simultaneously, all ‘classes 
of society, at all seasons of the year. It 
does not, like them, owe its existence to 
hot weather; it does not exist m cold; 
it never commences in the housés of the 
cleanly; but attacks the depraved and 
indolent. It does not resenible ‘con- 
tagious diseases. The small-pox sends 
forth its poison at every season of the 
year, in every state of the atmosphere, 
and admits of no safeguard : ‘all the-ex- 
posed are endangered? But it*is“not 
thus with the plague ;. those who-have 
not engendered around. them ‘a putrid 
atmosphere, and thus: prepared them= 
selves to receive contagion,»remain in 
saféty. No British sailorhas everbeen 
its victim, though -his® ship receives a 
cargo moored under the walls of Con- 
stantinople while the plague desolates 
the city. Cleanliness and good order 
presents a barrier the plague has never 
broken through. < 
Tn illustration of the truth of these 
rematks, LE appeal to History... At what 
period the first plague occurred is un- 
known. ‘In 'the second yéarvof the Pe-. 
loponnesian war; a «pestilential: disease 
broke ‘out at Athensobut \itvhad not 
the characteristic | symptoms) of the 
plague; ‘the physicians: were ignorant 
of its nature—an evidenée that it had 
not before visited’ the civilized world. 
Rome was' several times visited by pes- 
tilence, probably epidemic fevers. But 
we pass onward to a period when: ‘un- 
certainty is no’ more;-when, in the 
sixth century; the’ Angel.of Death spread 
his’ wings over’ Europe and made: it 
desolate. 4 es 
In the reign of the Emperor Jus« 
tinian, a plague ‘broke out, between 
the’ Sarbonian Bog and Egypt, which 
spread over ‘and beyond the, Roman 
empire, and did not cease, exeepting 
for short periods, until it had’ existed 
fifty-two years, and had eut off a greater 
number’ of) people thane now inhabit 
Europe. The physicians; though re- 
puted skilful, lost. the confidence of the 
3 U people 
