428 Report from the Select Committee appointed to consider 



John Green, Esq., Treasurer to the Levant Company. — Has 

 been in Constantinople from the year 1774 to the end of 1780; 

 six years. Has during that period seen a raging violent plague 

 in May, June and July, by which upwards of 200,000 people died. 

 It was he thinks in 1778, and was the greatest ever known till 

 about five or six years ago, when there was one rather more vio- 

 lent. Thinks the plague is an epidemic, occasioned by a parti- 

 cular state of the atmosphere ; and contagious so far, that if you 

 come in contact with the person actually ill, there is the same 

 ground for apprehension in that case, as in case of any fever. 

 Does not think it can be communicated by the clothes or goods; 

 by goods, certainly not. The clothes belonging to persons who 

 die of the plague are sold ; they never destroy them. Has never 

 known the clothes to be the cause of the plague in other persons. 

 It is a general remark, that the dealers in clothes do not take the 

 plague. The natives do nothing with the clothes; the Europeans 

 generally wash them, but there are few cases of plague among 

 Europeans ; the reason why he thinks they are not infectious is, 

 that the plague frequently ceases suddenly; it ceases, and does 

 not recur for two, three, four, or five years ; and the clothes not 

 being destroyed, but generally distributed and worn as well as 

 the bedding — conceives that if they were contagious it would be 

 impossible that we could be without the plague during that pe- 

 riod — even the bedding is sold. There is a custom in Turkey, 

 that if a stranger dies in the plague, the governor or pasha takes 

 possession of his property, and the clothes are part of the pro- 

 perty; and of course he orders them to be sold for his own be- 

 nefit, and they dare not destroy them. Considers that the same 

 person can have the plague more than once, and has known in- 

 stances; but only from common report. It is the general belief 

 of most people ; but there is a particular symptom, that if a per- 

 son has the plague with a particular species of buboes — they call 

 it the Blessed — when they have had that, they are not liable to 

 take it again so much; if they do, it is only slightly. Has heard 

 that the Abbe who had the care of the Frank hospital at Con- 

 stantinople had the plague ten or twelve times. 



It has been generally conceived that the plague was put a stop 

 to by extreme hot weather, or extreme cold weather, and thought 

 so too till lately. Is of opinion it is not the heat, but the effect 

 of the heat. It is the fall of the dew that stops it, because the 

 plague prevails at Alexandria, in Egypt, occasionally, till the 24th 

 of June; at that time the sun has such power, that it occasions 

 strong exhalations ; a strong fall of dew, almost like rain; and 

 it is so much a matter in course, that the people, on the 24th of 

 June, who had shut themselves up, came out without any appre- 

 hensions 



