210 HOSACK ON THE LAWS OF CONTAGION. 



uninfected; which exemption is ascribed by Dr. Plott to the draining 

 and greater cleanliness of that city.* 



The great plague with which Marseilles was visited in 1720, and 

 which destroyed upwards of sixty thousand of its inhabitants, presents 

 us with a detail of facts which leads to the same conclusion. Thia 

 disease, it is well ascertained, was introduced from the Levant by a ship 

 which arrived at Marseilles from the coast of Syria. It appeared first 

 among the sailors of the suspected ship ; it was next taken by the por- 

 ters engaged in opening and airing the merchandise in the Lazaretto ; 

 it was then introduced into the city, and spread among the poor, and 

 first of all in a street which was only occupied by the lower class of 

 people.f 



In the commencement of the disease, Bertrand remarks, none but 

 children and poor persons were attacked by it.J In a short time it 

 extended to the neighbouring streets; it was also conveyed into the 

 Hotel Dieu, by a person received as a patient from the street where 

 the distemper first broke out; two of the nurses and the matron of 

 that institution first died of the disease, when the infection spread with 

 great mortality, destroying the physicians, surgeons, apothecaries, con- 

 fessors, and all the other officers and servants of the house, with the 

 whole of the poor in the hospital, including above three hundred 

 foundlings.^ 



Soon after, all intercourse was prohibited between the town and 

 neighbouring country: the scarcity of provisions which ensued, inde- 

 pendently of the crowded state of the city, greatly added to the mor- 



* History of Oxfordshire. f Bertrand's Relation Historique, p. 414. J Ibid, p. 50. 



\ Ibid. p. 92. 



