322 TRAVELS IN AFRICA, 
boaftful when the patient alone is threatened, are both equally 
alert in their efforts to efcape. The ignorant and unrefle<^ling 
Muflim, indeed, awe-ftruck, and refigned to the unalterable de- 
cree of Fate, hangs over the couch of his expiring relative. But 
the report, guided by prejudice, is likely to miflead, and the ob- 
fervation can be of little value when the fole fentiment is ftupor. 
Thus the Plague remains almoft deftitute of a local habitation, 
though it have a name in nofology. 
Who can at this day determine, whether the peftilence men- 
tioned by Thucydides be the fame as that of Modern Egypt 
and Turkey ? Or whether the epidemical difeafes, which have 
for feveral centuries, at intervals ravaged different parts of the 
Turkifh empire, have been all fpecifically the fame? The 
Europeans frequenting the Levant, have written profound 
treatifes on the plague, fimply from having feen a quantity of 
dead bodies carried pafl the doors of their houfes, which the 
double optics of fear have occafionally magnified from 500 to 
10,000. 
The fads that appear chiefly to be afcertained relative to the 
plague, are, ifl. That the infedion is not received but by 
adual contad. In this particular, it would feem lefs formi- 
dable than feveral other diforders. 2. That it is communicated 
by certain fubftances, by others not, as by a woollen cloth, 
or rope of hemp, but not by a piece of ivory, wood, or a rope 
made of the date tree ; nor by any thing that has been com- 
pletely immerfed in water. It would appear from the report of 
the 
