418 Report from the Select Committee appointed to consider 



within the scope of inquiry to which they have been directed ; but 

 they see no reason to question the vahdity of the principles on 

 which such regulations appear to have been adopted. 

 June 14, 1819. 



Minutes of EvidExMce. 



Charles MacLean, M.D. — Employed himself in 1815 in in- 

 vestigating the plague in the Greek Pest Hospital near the Seven 

 Towers at Constantinople, commonly called " The Plague of the 

 Levant :" Considers the plague as not contagious. Never knew 

 an instance of a plague case imported into England — has reason 

 to believe such an occurrence has never happened during the ex- 

 istence of quarantine or before. — Does not consider the plague of 

 1665 to have been the Levant plague. Is of opinion that the 

 plague is capable of being cured in the proportion of four cases 

 out of five by particular treatment.— Has heard of inoculation 

 for the plague — of a gentleman (Dr. White, who died in Egypt) 

 inoculating himself three times and not taking the disease the two 

 first times; but being seized the third time with the malady in 

 consequence of a coincidence which in Dr. M.'s opinion would 

 have equally happened whether he had been inoculated or not. 

 Knows it to have been Dr. White's opinion that the plague was 

 not contagious. Considers the establishment of our own qua- 

 rantine laws not to be of the smallest use — that is, if it be true 

 that there never has arrived any person from the Levant, or any 

 other place, actually labouring under the plague ; and if it be 

 true (according to the advocates for contagion) that goods, wares, 

 and merchandize can retain infection for seven, fourteen, or twenty 

 vears, it must be apparent that, with respect to goods as well as 

 with respect to persons, a quarantine of forty days can in such 

 case be of no sort of use. Knows that the regulations of the Laza- 

 retto system adopted in Italy have not been effectual for prevent- 

 ing contagion. Recently at the town of Noya, which was sur- 

 rounded by linesof circumvallation, ditches, and cordons of troops, 

 and every mode of restriction imposed on the inhabitants, the 

 disease continued, as it has done at other places subject to plague 

 police, its usual course, and ended at the usual time. Persons 

 employed as expurgators of goods at the Lazaretto are more ex- 

 empt from the disease than the community at large. Feels as- 

 sured that from mere contact he could not take the disease. 

 Does not believe, as has been represented, that in the towns of the 

 East the Turks suffer in a greater proportion than the Chris- 

 tian population. The Turks do not desert their friends when 

 seized with the disease, not feeling that dread of the malady which 

 Christians do ; and it is admitted by the advocates of contagion, 

 that dread operates more severely than what they call the true 



contagion 



