22 Report from ike Select Committee appointed to consider 



and the perfection of the arts,' — As Dr. Mead (who has written 

 on the plague, although he never saw it, has mainly contributed, 

 by his authority, to establish the quarantine regulations of this 

 country,) speaks in a particular manner of Grand Cairo, stating 

 it to be quite a seminary for the plague ; begs leave to solicit at- 

 tention to the state of that city, as illustrative of the causes of 

 plague. The streets are narrow and winding, amid a multitude 

 of houses which crowd one another ; and it is so exceedingly po- 

 pulous, (several families residing in one house, and a number of 

 people in each room,) that Savary informs us, two hundred per- 

 sons live witliin a compass that v.^ould accommodate l)Ut thirty 

 in Paris. A great canal, besides, passes through it, into which ail 

 manner of filth and carrion is thrown, causing an intolerable 

 stench. Notwithstanding all this, however, it is remarkable that 

 the plague, as well in this city as in others of the same part of 

 the globe, has its chief seasons ; for it breaks out or becomes 

 ef)idemic only when the hot sultry winds from the south, blowing 

 across the sandy plains and deserts of Arabia and Africa, begin 

 to set in. The blasts of these winds are most pernicious to ani- 

 mal life ; according as thev are described by travellers, under the 

 names of the Simoon, the Samiel, the Kampsin, and the Scirocco. 

 It would seem that thev contained a large portion of hydrogen 

 or inflammable gas, and that in their full force (for the greater 

 levity of this gas, it is probable, causes them to rush in currents,) 

 they extinguish every principle of irritability in the living fibre : 

 persons killed bv them, speedily become black and spotted, from 

 extravasated blood, But to return : it is a fact, that so soon as 

 the«e winds cease to ])revail, (and it may here be mentioned that 

 the same winds have been with justice considered, by the most 

 early writers, the chief causes of epidemic diseases, particularly 

 by Hippocrates and Pliny ; who say, that the pestilence travels 

 with them from the southern to the western parts of the world,) 

 the disease abates. When, again, the winds from the north- 

 eastern quarters, called bv Hippocrates the Etesian, or annual 

 gales, set in, the season of health returns. Conformable to these 

 facts, Assali'ni states, ' I constantly observed, that whenever 

 the winds from tlie south and south-west prevailed, the num- 

 ber of sick and of deaths was always increased. The contrary 

 happened in fine weather, and when the wind came from the 

 north.' As the rising of tlie Nile happens about the same time 

 these healthy winds begin to blow, covering the nmddy and 

 slimy surface of its banks, and washing away all the filth which 

 had been accumulated in the stagnant waters and canals, with 

 whicli it communicates, the cessation of the plague in many places 

 of Egypt, is calculated almost to a day. Now, if to the filthy 

 and dirty state of the cities in Egypt and the Levant, the pesti- 

 lential 



