^04 PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. [aNNO 1764. 



ffined the Lacedaemonians, who then besieged them, had poisoned their wells, 

 and that such was the cause of their death. Besides, he pretends to affirm, from 

 the little experience he had of the plague, that the same person cannot have it 

 twice, which is absolutely false. The Greek Padre, who took care of the Greek 

 hospital at Smyrna for 50 years, assured Dr. M. that he had had the plague 12 

 different times in that interval; and it is very certain that he died of it in 1 736. 

 M. Brossard had it in the year 1745, when he returned from France; and it is 

 very well known that he and all his family died of it in April 1762. The Abbe, 

 who takes care of the Frank-hospital at Pera, swore to Dr. M. that he had had 

 it already at Constantinople and at Smyrna, 4 different times. But what was still 

 more extraordinary was, that a young woman who had it in Sept. last, with its 

 most pathognomonic symptoms, as buboes and carbuncles, after a fever, had it 

 again on the 1 1th of April, and died of it some days after, while there was not 

 the least surmise of any accident in or about Constantinople since December, 

 this only one excepted: but there died 4 persons in the same small house in 

 September ; and as the house was never well cleaned, and this young woman 

 always lived in it, she was at last attacked a 2d time, and died. 



The only antecedents that Dr. M. could observe to this malady, was a great 

 murrain among the black cattle in May 1745, and in the beginning of 

 June, the same year, swarms of butterflies flew about, and there were great 

 numbers of caterpillars creeping every where, and afterwards a violent plague: 

 and after observing the same anno 1752 and 1758, he foretold to Sir James 

 Porter, that they should have a hot plague in those years; which accordingly 

 happened, especially in the months of August and Sept. 1758, when many of 

 Marsellini's family, Spathari, Skwackhim's cook, Charlacci Rimbeault, Jackino's 

 son, &c. died of it. 



The plague was then more frequent in the Levant than it was when Dr. M. 

 came first into that country, about 30 years before; for then they were almost 

 strangers to it in Aleppo and in Tripoli of Syria, and they had it but seldom at 

 Smyrna ; whereas they then had it frequently at Aleppo, and summer and winter 

 in Smyrna, though never so violently in the winter; which must be owing to the 

 great communication by commerce over all the Levant, and more extended into 

 the country villages than it used to be. He takes the plague to be an infection 

 communicated by contact from one body to another; that is to a sound body 

 from an infected one, whose poisonous effluvia, subtile miasmata, and volatile 

 steams, enter the cutaneous pores of sound persons within their reach, or mix 

 with the air, which they draw in respiration, and so advancing by the vasa in- 

 halantia, mix with the blood and animal fluids; in which, by their noxious and 

 active qualities, they increase their motion and velocity, and in some clays pro- 

 duce a fever; so that the nearer and ihe more frequent the contact is, the greater 



