Leaves from a Madeira Garden 



its walls was published. Patients died and no 

 notice of their death reached their friends. So, 

 at any rate, it was commonly said. The wildest 

 rumours began to gain currency. The ignorant 

 believed that the doctors inoculated people and 

 murdered them ; some of the better educated 

 asserted that the whole thing was being run as 

 a financial speculation by the Lazaretto doctor, 

 who was paid so much a head for those under 

 his charge. Sinister stories of the treatment of 

 women and girls were widely spread abroad. 

 Meantime people of influence, whose interest 

 was against any interference with the shipping 

 trade of the island, were strenuously denying 

 the jexistence of any sickness at all, and the 

 Government was watering it down to " infectious 

 fever." 



A veritable reign of terror resulted. To be 

 taken to the Lazaretto was feared as a sentence 

 of death. People who had been in contact with 

 patients ran away and hid themselves to escape 

 the dreaded isolation. I happened one day to 

 look over my garden wall and to see the chief 

 of police and several constables with an ambu- 

 lance-car standing outside a neighbouring cot- 

 tage. I inquired their object, and was told 



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