MOSACK ON THE LAWS OP CONTAGION. 23 I 



tality of the disease: the number of the sick increasing, an hospital was 

 opened for the reception of the infected, where the disease proved fatal 

 to all the attendants. But the disease was not only propagated in those 

 public institutions, where great numbers were crowded together, and in 

 the confined dwellings of the poor ; other circumstances occurred which 

 served greatly to diffuse the poison still more generally throughout the 

 city. According to Bertrand, the streets were crowded with " the sick, 

 the dying, and the dead ;" and the vapours which arose from the putrid 

 dead bodies, in every part of the city, served to infect the air and spread 

 the contagion ; indeed, it soon extended to places that before this had 

 been inaccessible to it ; monasteries, and houses shut up in the most 

 exact manner, were no longer places of security; the whole city be- 

 came more or less one infirmary.* 



The infection, too, was very much increased from another source 

 not less dangerous. An opinion prevailed that the dogs received the 

 contagion from contact with infected clothes, and thereby became the 

 means of spreading it still more extensively; the consequence was an 

 order to destroy them ; in a few days the streets were strewed with their 

 carcasses; a prodigious quantity were thrown into the water; these 

 also were soon cast upon the shore, where, by the action of a hot sun, 

 the air was filled with the most noxious vapours. Infected clothing and 

 furniture were also continually thrown into the street from the windows 

 of the houses in which the disease prevailed, and, if possible, still fur- 

 ther to give wings to the poison, fires were injudiciously had recourse to, 

 for the purpose of destroying the infection; " at hours appointed," says 

 Bertrand, " the whole city appeared on fire, and the air became loaded 

 with a thick black smoke, better calculated to retain than to dissipate the 



* Bertrand* p. 145. 



