Lj2 ADDITIONAL notes on contagion. 



rd by (lie menacing consequences of a bold examination into the powers aiul properties of 

 the plague. 



"Dr. Whyte, an English physician, determined to discover if this malady, so destruc- 

 tive to a large portion of the globe, and which filled with apprehension the remainder, 

 could not be checked, or rendered le*s virulent, by the introduction of inoculation. 



"Resolved to become the patient of his own speculation, during the time the plague ra- 

 ged again at Rosetta, (which it did towards the fall of the year, when numbers of Sepoys 

 died,) he inoculated himself with matter taken from the buboes of an infected person. 

 The attempt failed twice; the third proved fatal; in three days after the symptoms ap- 

 peared, he died, falling a rauch-to-be-lamented victim to a disinterested zeal, benevolent- 

 ly and intrepidly directed for the benefit and happiness of the community." Wilson's 

 Hist, of the British Expedition to Egypt, Alo, page 257. 



The highly respectable Dr. M'Gregor, (see Medical Sketches of the Expedition to 

 Egypt from India) relates the same fact more circumstantially as follows : " I know not 

 that I can better describe the disease than by a short statement of the cases of some of 

 the medical gentlemen who had the disease, most of whom wrote me accurately every 

 thing that they felt. Dr. Whyte entered the pest-house at El Hammed, on the even- 

 ing of the 2d of January, 1802. In a letter of that date he writes to me, 'I just now 

 inoculated myself, by friction, with bubonic matter on the left thigh ;' on the 3d, he says, 

 • / have this morning inoculated myself \ by incision, on the right forearm.' Mr. Rice, 

 then doing duty in the pest-house at EI Hammed, gives the whole of the case. In a let- 

 ter on the 3d of January, he writes to me, 'Dr. Whyte came here last night; soon after 

 he came in, he nibbed some matter from the bubo of a woman, on the inside of his thighs. 

 The next morning, he inoculated himself in the wrist with a lancet, with matter taken 

 from the running bubo of a Sepoy :' In subsequent letters Mr. Rice says ' that Dr. Whyte 

 continued in good health on the 5th, and all day on the 6th, till the evening, when he was 

 attacked with rigors and other febrile symptoms. After sweating profusely, he was better 

 in the morning of the 1th, but in the afternoon the shivering returned; and after it had 

 continued 30 minutes, a severehot stage came on, then a profuse sweating followed, but with 

 it much affection of the head, tremor of the limbs, particularly of the upper extremities, 

 tongue black and dry, skin hot, pulse full, hard, and irregular, thirst, great prostration 

 of strength, and anxiety. The head was the only place he complained of, and it seemed 

 to be the principal seat of his disease: On the 8th, these symptoms continued, and there 

 jvas some delirium ; he begged to be removed from, the pest-house at El Hammed, to the 

 old pest-house at Rosetta, under the charge of the Arabs, He was removed on the morn- 

 ing of the 9th, and died in the afternoon of that day very delirious.* '[ 



