Non-Contagion of Plague. 
the 24th of June, it then abates, and 
presently after ceases; both agree, that 
in Turkey the sick are not avoided. 
Divest these facts of name, and ask 
the disputants, whether they relate to 
an epidemic or a contagious disease >— 
and they will answer, To neither. As 
disputants, they are decided and warm, 
and opposed ;—as philosophers, they are 
agreed. Divested of party feeling, let 
them pursue the subject. The growing 
commerce of the world demands their 
vigilance; let them inquire on what 
conditions the Almighty has promised 
abundance, and whether those condi- 
tions and that abundance be not con- 
nected with the preservation of health. 
But, the question is one of fact, not 
of opinion: I shall, however, notice 
the grounds on which the two parties 
support their theories. 
On the part of the Contagionists, I 
shall confine myself to the works of 
Dr. Mead—because he was the official 
adviser of Government, and the facts 
which he details were those which gave 
occasion to the Quarantine Laws; and, 
as the Government may be supposed to 
have afforded every facility of informa- 
tion, it may be concluded that they are 
the most important facts the subject 
presented. 
The disease the Doctor states to ori- 
ginate in Ethiopia or Egypt, and no 
where besides; that, in general, the 
plagues of other countries may be 
traced to intercourse with them, but, 
in some cases, insects are believed to 
have conveyed the infection. This fact, 
however, the Doctor does not insist on, 
as he has no positive evidence. Having 
ascertained the origin, he proceeds to 
establish by facts the subtlety and per- 
tinacity of its infectious power. 
“A galley-slave employed in burying the 
dead at Marseilles, nen from Nae to 
the village of St. Laurent ; where finding a 
kinsman, he presented him with a waist- 
coat and a pair of stockings. The kinsman 
died in two or three days—shortly after, 
three of his children, and their mother. 
His son, who resided at Canourgue, on 
returning from burying his father, gave his 
brother-in-law a cloak; who laid it on his 
bed, and Jost a child in one day—two days 
after, his wife—and in seven or eight, he 
followed himself. The parents of this 
unhappy family, taking possession of the 
goods, underwent the same fate.” 
_ “The plague which happened in Rome 
in 1656, was conveyed thither from Naples 
by cloths and other wares; which, after 
being kept some time in the Castle of St. 
Lawrence, were conveyed into Rome.” 
647 
“The plague at Marseilles, in 1720, was. 
brought from the Levant. The first who: 
died was a sailor, then those who attended 
on the goods—afterwards the surgeon wha 
examined the bodies of those who died ; it 
was, however, six weeks from the sailor’s 
death, to any being attacked in the city; 
and, before the arrival of the plague, a 
malignant fever raged there, and even an 
instance or two had occurred of persons 
dying with eruptions.” 
“In 1726, an English ship took in goods 
at Grand Cairo, and landed them at Alex- 
andria. Upon opening one of the bales na 
field, two Turks were immediately killed ; 
and some birds which happened to fly over 
the field, dropped down dead.” 
“ A sack of cotton was put on shore at 
Bermudas by stealth, and lay hid above a 
month, without prejudice to the people in 
whose house it was; but when it came to 
be distributed among the inhabitants, it 
carried such a contagion along with it, 
that the living scarcely sufficed to bury the 
dead.” 
This circumstance was communicated 
from Dr. Halley to Dr. Mead. 
‘‘ There are instances of goods that have 
retained their infection many years. In 
particular, Alexander Benedictus gives a 
very distinct relation of a feather-bed, that 
was laid by seven years on suspicion of its 
being infected, which produced mischievous 
effects at the end of that great length of 
time: .and Sir Theodore Mayerne relates, 
that some cloths, fouled with blood and 
matter from plague sores, being lodged 
between matting and the wall of a house 
in Paris, gave the plague, several years 
afterwards, to a workman who took them 
out. In Rome, in 1657, the infected were 
separated from those who were well, and 
both were removed from their dwelling ; 
but, of the sound who were remoyed, 
searcely five in a hundred had received the 
infection.” 
In 1665, fires were ordered to be kept 
in the streets of London for three days ; 
on the following day 4,000 died, which 
was attributed to the fires, The same 
circumstance is related of the plague at 
Marseilles ; and Dr. Mead gravely says, 
“What has been said of fires, is like- 
wise to be understood of the firing of guns, 
which has been too rashly advised.” 
The Doctor goes on to state, that 
“A very ingenious author, Boccaccio De- 
cameron, in his admirable Dissertation on 
the Plague at Florence in 1348, relates 
what himself saw,—that two hogs, finding. 
in the streets the rags which had been 
thrown out from off a poor man dead of 
the disease, after snuffing upon them, and 
tearing them with their teeth, fell into con- 
yulsions, and died in Jess than an hour.” 
Dr. Mead relates other facts, but 
none 
