the Validity of the Doctrine of Contagion in the Plague. 1 i 



which we are perhaps not very well acquainted with. Thinks it 

 probable that the circumstance of no plague occurring in Eng- 

 land may be owing to none having ever been imported ; but 

 there are many circumstances to be weighed, between the present 

 and the time the plague prevailed in England ; improvements in 

 the structures of the houses and towns ; cleanliness, ventilation, 

 and police regulations, are enforced in a degree imknown in the 

 17th century. Medical science stands now on different grounds ; 

 and we have acquired a knowledge of the disease, its treatment, 

 and prevention. In Egypt, as well as in Turkey, many existing 

 circumstances tend to the propagation of contagion, and render- 

 ing it more virulent. Were typhus fever to a])pear in those coun- 

 tries, it is difficult to conceive how it ever could be eradicated. 

 From the nature of fomites, considers the risk would be increased 

 from having no quarantine. The risk in this country would be 

 less, compared with a country where the intercourse was short and 

 by land, with the country where the plague raged. 



Dr. James Curry, Senior Physician to Guy's Hospital. — Con- 

 siders plague as contagious, to a certainty; and for this reason, 

 that all persons who are apprized of its contagious nature, may, 

 by keeping apart from those persons who labour under the dis- 

 ease, or are suspected of labouring under the disease, be perfectly 

 free from it, even at a very short distance from them ; and pro- 

 bably, if they were to keep to the windward of them, they might 

 even almost touch them with impunity. Thinks the plague at- 

 tends, and is usually incidental to, a particular state of what is 

 called by Sydenham and others, constitution of atmosphere; 

 and the various changes which take place in the air at different 

 times, appear to be produced by an interchange of electricity be- 

 tween the earth and atmosphere, which occasions that particular 

 state of the human constitution which renders it liable to some 

 one certain species of disorder, for the time it exerts its influence, 

 and not to others. For instance, the small-pox will prevail un- 

 der one state of atmosphere ; the measles under another, and 

 scarlatina under a third; and we scarcely ever find that two of 

 those disorders prevail at the same time : each has a particular 

 or appropriate state of atmosphere which especially favours it. 

 Considers the cause of plague as two-fold ; the plague is in itself 

 a highly malignant fever, arising from a peculiar and very viru- 

 lent morbid poison, generated by the bodies of the sick whilst 

 labouring under the disease, and capable, when applied to the 

 bodies of those who are in health, in sufficient dose or intensity, 

 of exciting the same kind of fever in them : the spread and dif- 

 fusion of the plague, however, seems to require the co-operation 

 of a malaria — malaria produced by the state of the soil and the 



atmosphere 



