On the lateVlague at Malta. 245 



The patients had every advantage which could be afforded them 

 by skill and science, aided by that courageous zeal which spurns 

 every idea of personal safety, when an imperious duty is to be 

 performed*. Accordingly, the proportion of recoveries was 

 much greater than that which the Maltese practice has to re- 

 cord. Not any of the attendants took the infection. They 

 were made to bathe, and employed frictions of warm oil, as did 

 also the military on duty. In addition to this latter preserva- 

 tive, recourse was had to cold ablutions of vinegar and water. 



With the symptoms l)y which the plague is characterized, it 

 presents others, in its attack, similar to those of the endemial 

 caums, or bilious remitting fever, commonly styled in the Me- 

 diterranean the fever of the country. At the comm.encement it 

 therefore requires the same antiphlogistic treatment, by bleeding 

 and other evacuants,to diminish the powerful determination to the 

 brain, the oppression of which is among the earliest of the sym- 

 ptoms, accompanied by stupor and delirium. On the subsidence 

 of the inflammatorv symptoms, the case having taken a favour- 

 able turn, the method of cure is in either fever the same, inde- 

 pendently of what belongs to the tumours and other characteristic 

 ^igns of plague. The symptoms, as they have latterly presented 

 themselves, and the treatment which appears to have been most 

 successful, are described by Ulstadius, who wrote on plague so 

 far back as the commencement of the sixteenth century f ; and 

 by Seimertus, who collected all the authorities up to tlie middle 

 of the seventeenth. 



Several persons at Malta, and among others a British mer- 

 chant, asserted that they could distinguish a glare, a peculiar 

 wildness of the eyes, before the individual himself in whom it 

 was perceived, was sensible of the attack of plague, and while 

 he was still foUov/ing his usual occupations. The writer had to 

 witness the effect of a sudden attack in a Maltese, who had pro- 

 ceeded, apparently in good health, as far as the Conservatory 

 square at Valletta, when his progress was in a moment arrested. 

 He had just sufficient strength to maintain himself in an erect 

 I)osture ; but was obliged to be supported on either side when 



*The following; inolanclioly fart is a proof, nmons; others, that an ardent 

 <lcsire to procure infoimation with a view to benefit mankind, will some- 

 times carry an individual heyond the prescribed limit of his duty. Dr. 

 M.-icAdam, phviiciiui to the forces, was sent l)y the governor oF Malta to 

 C/Ozo, to direct tlie means to be employed in the case of" the plaj^iie break- 

 ins; out amon^ the military stationed there, lie was particularly enjoined 

 not to incur any personal risk, his beinj; a task of mere superintcndancp. 

 His anxiety, however, to acquire a precise knowk>d;:e ot" the nature of the 

 disease, led him to pay fref|uent visits to the pest-hospital, where at length 

 he cau'^ht the infection, and was the last victim of the scourge which %p 

 long ravaged the islands of Malta and Gozo. 



t His Treatise appeared in 1 j;'6. 



Q 3 taken 



