VOL. Llir.] PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. 687 



the inhabitants. The infection crept gently and gradually on, confined chiefly 

 to one particular quarter, till the beginning of May, when it began to spread 

 visibly and universally. They shut up on the 27 th, and their confinement lasted 

 96 days. The fury indeed of the contagion did not continue longer than the 

 middle of July, and many of the merchants went abroad with caution early in 

 August; but as the British consul had no urgent business to induce him to ex- 

 pose himself to any risk, his family remained in close quarters till they could 

 visit their friends with tolerable security. As an addition to the uneasiness of 

 their situation, the earthquakes returned the latter end of April, though with no 

 great violence, except the first shock, and that much less terrible than those of 

 1759. They felt 6 or 7 within the week, and 4 more at long intervals during 

 their imprisonment; but as they were all slight, their apprehensions soon sub- 

 sided. At their release from confinement the last day of August, they flattered 

 themselves with the hopes of a speedy release from danger; but it pleased God to 

 order it otherwise. In all the plagues with which Aleppo had been visited in the 

 18th century, the contagion is said to have regularly and constantly ceased in 

 August or September, the hottest months in the year; and it is pretty certain, 

 that it disappeared about that time in 1742, 1743, 1744, and 176O; but unfor- 

 tunately the year 1761 proved an instance of the fallacy of general observations 

 on this dreadful subject; for from the end of March 1761 to the middle of Sep- 

 tember 1762, scarcely a day passed without some deaths or fresh attacks from 

 the distemper; and though the violence of it ceased in the autumn, yet on an 

 average it was fatal to at least 30 persons in every week, from that time to the 

 end of the winter. In February 1762 they were pretty healthy: hearing but of 

 few accidents, and those in the skirts of the city, they once more began to en- 

 tertain some faint hopes of a farther exemption, but they were of very short 

 duration: in March the infection spread again, and in April increased with such 

 rapidity, that they were obliged to retire to close quarters on the 26th of that 

 month, and did not go abroad again until the 28th of August, when the burials 

 were reduced to about 20 a day ; the infection gradually decreased till the middle 

 of September, after which time no accident had been heard of. 



Mr. D. wishes he could with any precision determine the loss in the 2 sum- 

 mers 1761-62; but, in times of such general horror and confusion, it is in a manner 

 impossible to come at the exact truth. If you inquire of the natives, they swell 

 the account each year from 40 to 6o,000, and some even higher; but, as the 

 eastern disposition to exaggeration reigns at present almost universally, little ac- 

 curacy is to be expected from them : this however is certain, that the mortality 

 of 1762 was very considerable, perhaps not much inferior to any in the 18th 

 century. Some of the Europeans had been at no small pains and expenc^ to 

 procure a regular and daily list of the funerals during their confinement, and 



