452 PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. [aNNO 1720. 



buncles upon them, walk about as if they had nothing the matter with them, 

 and get well. The greater number, however, are affected with fever, and are 

 extremely ill. Vomiting and diarrhoea, with sudden loss of strength, whether 

 accompanied or not accompanied with fever, denote an attack of the plague; 

 and the more so, if to these symptoms there be added a pain in the emunctories 

 or glands. A red coloured pimple, of the size of half a vetch, and containing 

 pus at its apex, is of a malignant nature, and soon enlarges into a livid car- 

 buncle. These carbuncles appear indiscriminately on all parts of the body, not 

 excepting the lips, tongue, bulbs of the eyes, glans penis, &c. Buboes 

 appear only in the emunctories. Small hard glandular tumors about the neck 

 are malignant. Exanthemata* are always fatal. It is a good sign if the buboes 

 suppurate quickly. It is not a bad practice to open them with a lancet, when 

 they do not come to perfect maturation. Many who have been cured by the 

 dispersion of a bubo, feel for a year or two afterwards a dull pain in the part 

 where they had the bubo, if they go to places infected with the plague. In 

 some constitutions the plague remains dormant for several days, and then comes 

 into action. If a person who is recovering from the plague commits any great 

 error in diet before the 40th day, and a fresh bubo appears, he dies. It is very 

 unusual for a person who has been perfectly recovered from an attack of the 

 plague to have it a second time during the same year. A person who had lived 

 in an infected house for some months without taking the plague, was at length 

 seized with it. Old men, Diemerbroeck, cap. 4, for the most escape infection; 

 young persons, on the contrary, are very liable to take it. Foreigners are more 

 susceptible of it than the native inhabitants. Of all nations the Armenians are 

 the least liable to infection. They eat very little animal food, but are much 

 addicted to the use of onions, leeks, garlick, and wine. It is not safe to eat 

 pork during the plague. Nothing predisposes more to the taking of infection 

 than passions of the mind, and particularly grief and fear. Persons affected with 

 the venereal disease, indifferenter se habent ad contagium;-f- but their buboes 

 when they suppurate, degenerate into fistulous ulcers. Houses which are kept 

 clean and neat are not so readily infected as those that are dirty. Cachectic 



» Viz. petechiae, maculae nigrae, &c. 



+ Forestus, de Peste Delphensi, relates that persons affected with the venereal disease were exempt 

 from the plague which raged at Delft in 1557. In the London plague of l665 there were many, 

 according to Hodges (Loimolog. sect, iv,) who, from a persuasion that the syphilitic virus would pre- 

 serve them from the contagion of the plague, sought the most abandoned prostitutes purposely to give 

 themselves the venereal infection ; but, adds the last-mentioned author, the majority of them found 

 no seairity in this abhorred practice; the pestilential contagion was soon superadded to the syphilitic 

 poison; and their indiscretion only served to accelerate their death. The observations of Desgenettes, 

 chief physician to the French army which invaded Egypt, coincide in this respect with those of 

 Hodges. 



