ihe Validity of the Doctrifie of Contagion in the Plague. 25 



vessel bringing it, carry on their face strong marks of improbabi- 

 lity. In the first place, there was a clean Kill of health from the 

 place the ship took in her cargo. She left Siclon, on the coast 

 of Syria, the 3Ist January 1720, and did not arrive at Marseilles 

 till the 25th of May, making a long voyage of four months. In 

 the second place, admitting llie plague v/as on board of this ship, 

 how happened it, that after three of her crew died at Leghorn, 

 none of the rest should have fallen sick till two days after her 

 arrival at iMarseilles, when one of the sailors died ? And it is here 

 proper to observe, that although she put into Leghorn, where 

 these men died, she did not carry the disease there ; on the con- 

 trary, the physician and surgeon of the lazaretto there, after in- 

 spection, granted a certificate that these men died of a malig- 

 nant fever, the con sequence of bad provisions, a circumstance verv 

 likely to occur from the length and badness of the voyage. In 

 the third place, how happened it, that a cabin boy, who must all 

 along have been with the ship, did not die till some time after a 

 quarantine officer, who had been put on board on her arrival at 

 IVIarseilles, died? The quarantine officer died on the Tith of 

 June, and the cabin boy on the 23d. But besides this ship of 

 Chataud's, the contagionists of those days were obliged to have 

 recourse to other ships for bringing the contagion; viz. a Cap- 

 tain Gabriel's arriving on the 13th of JuiiC, and a Captain Ail- 

 land's arriving on the 23d from Sidon. Both these ships, how- 

 ever, having brought foul bills, were placed under strict (|uarap.- 

 tine. Last of all, they are obliged to jiive countenance to an 

 idea, that the crews of all the different vessels smuggled small 

 parcels of their goods, in order to account for the disease ap- 

 pearing in different quarters of the city, particularly in the Rue 

 de I'Escale, a filthy part of Marseilles, like our St. Giles. There 

 chances, however, to be a gratuitous admission on the part of the 

 medical attendants of the lazaretto, that a bad fever had been 

 previously prevailing; and Monsieur Didier, the physician, gives 

 some cases which occurred even before the arrival of Chataud's 

 vessel, bearing every resemblance to the plague, inasmuch as 

 parotids and carbuncles were amongst the symptoms. 



Asked whether authors on the plague specify any period after 

 exposure or contact, that the disease seizes— anwers," We have 

 some wonderful accounts of the subtlety and instantaneous effects 

 of the plague contagion. Thus Boccacio, in liis description of 

 tVie plague at Florence in 134 S, relates tliat he saw, with his 

 own eyes, two hogs instantly fall into convulsions, and ilie in less 

 than two hours, after snuffling about with their snouts, and gnaw- 

 ing some pieces of bread that had been thrown out of the house 

 of a poor man dead of the plague. Forestus tells us of a young 

 nun seized with the disease, only by thrusting his hand into au 



old 



