244 On the late Plague at Malta. 



when, towards the close, the symptoms became milder, and the 

 attacks less frequent, the same timid caution — the same dread 

 of approaching the patient, so as to be enabled to direct a parti- 

 cular attention to the symptoms of his case — was to be noticed*. 



In aid of the Maltese practitioners,' several Turks and Greeks 

 were, at the instance of the Government, sent to Malta from 

 Smyrna. They are said to have been useful, not on account of 

 any particular knowledge they possessed of the management of 

 plague, but because they had been so accustomed to it, and in a 

 manner seasoned, that they braved its attacks in their attend- 

 ance on the sick. 



The attempts at plague inoculation were founded on the com- 

 monlv received opinion, that those who have had the disease 

 (and it is presumable that this was the case with several, if not 

 with all the above individuals f,) are not again liable to infection. 

 They may be less susceptible than others: but a Frenchman who 

 had been servant in an English family at Valletta, and who, 

 having caught the plague, had been sent to Fort Manoel for cure, 

 had, during his stay there, tv.o subsequent attacks, from the latter 

 of which, although a sharp one, he recovered perfectly. 



A Neapolitan physician, who had seen much of the plague in 

 Turkev and Greece, was among the boldest of the practitioners. 

 He did not hesitate to approach the sick, and to treat them 

 with freedom. It was his practice to cauterize the pestilential 

 tumors, and towards the close of the disease, when the inflam- 

 matory symptoms had subsided, to make a liberal use of cordials 

 and alexipharmics. 



It remains now to pay a well merited compliment to the Bri- 

 tish medical staff, whose exertions were unfortunately required h\ 

 the breaking out of the plague in the third garrison battalion, and 

 likewise in DeRolle's regiment, consisting entirely of foreigners. 



The military pest-hospital was under the management and 

 direction of Ralph Green, Esq. inspector-general of hospitals. 



♦ At Valletta, in n pnrt of the fortifii atioiis, huts were erected for such 

 of t'.ic prisoners of war as 1j:u) been released on tlie condition of their un- 

 Jcrtakini; the tasks of sweopnis: the streets, white- vTashinj; infected houses, 

 ^tc. in the event of their bcnn; seized by plague. A suspicious case liaving 

 occiu-red among them, the Maltese practitioner on duty kept the respectfi;! 

 distance of sixteen paces from his patient. It is true tiiat he was provided 

 ■with glasses; but how far, vvith this interval between the parties, they 

 helped him in his tiniifl itiqniries, is uncertain. 



f Smyrna is said to bo never f ntirely free from plague, more especial!;/ 

 in the district occupied by the Tmks. In that city, at Alexandria, am) 

 indeed wherever the disease is familiar, those vvliose temperament has en- 

 abled them to resist an attack, or who have escaped the contagion under 

 circumstances of the greatest exposure, are selected to administer to the 

 sick. There may be habits in which there is not the slightest susceptibility 

 to receive tlie infection, us in the example of the natural small-pox. 



The 



