"260 On Peflilential Difea/ss. 
nor that part of the Roman army which, under the command > 
of Marcellus, was ftationed in the elevated quarters of Tyche, 
Neapolis, and Epipole, were in the leaft affeéted by the 
plague. But this calamity was limited to the Romans under 
Crifpinus, in the ancient camp at Olympia; and to the allies, 
who were encamped at the head of the great port. Crifpinus 
and his troops, who had lived at Olympia a confiderable part 
of the two preceding years, or at leaft had remained in the 
vicinity of Syracufe, and had become in a degree habitu- 
ated to the air and water, fuffered lefs’ feverely than their 
enemies; and, when the ficknefs became general among 
them, recruited, and ceafed to be taken fick, in confequence 
of a removal to the high grounds of thé-city, occupied by 
their countrymen. The natives of the ifland, feeing the 
danger to which they were expofed, took refuge in their own 
cities, and efeaped the difeafe; but the Carthaginians, with- 
out any place of refuge, and entirely unaccuftomed to their 
fituation, totally perifhed. 
8. On the whole, then, it appears that the mortality, in 
every ipftance, occurring in the armies near Syracufe, ori- 
ginated entirely from local caufes: that there is no reafon to 
fufpe&t that this mortality was heightened by contagion, in 
the ufual acceptation of that term: that the fymptoms, fo far 
as we have any account of them, were fimilar to thofe which 
occur, under fimilar circumftances, in the Eaft and Weft 
Indies, in our own country, and in every part of the world: 
and that, as no difference is recorded as-exifting between thefe 
great epidemics or endemics before:and after the caufes were 
increafed by animal putrefaction, the advocates for the foreign 
derivation of peftilential difeafes muft relinquith the diftinétion 
between fevers from animal and vegetable putrefaction; or, 
if they maintain the contagious quality of the former, muft 
admit, ‘on equal evidence, the fame quality as characterifing 
the latter. To this it may be added, that,.as it was the uni- 
verfal practice of the ancients to defignate any and every 
wide-wafling difeafe by the name of plague, without any 
fpecial reference to its peculiar fymptoms, fo there is an’ 
equal propriety in our conferring the fame appellation on 
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