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accidents may happen in houfes, which were once 
infedted, and not well purified, all winter long: but 
thefe are fo rare, that they defer ve little or no atten- 
tion. 
I remember to have had the honour of writing to you 
my fentimentsof this diftemper fome years ago; and 
from all the oblervation I could make in the interval, 
I have no reafon to change my opinion, viz. that 
it is brought from Cairo commonly ; and that when 
once a houfe or fhip is infedted, it is very difficult to 
eradicate the animalcula,femina , effluvia, miajmata, or 
whatever name is proper for the reliques or remains 
of it, which getting once into a nidus , lodge there, 
condens’d by the cold during the winter, and when 
rarefied by a certain degree of heat, they adt upon 
bodies,. which have a difpofition, as women and chil- 
dren moftly, and fo fpread by contadl only, without 
communicating any malignancy to the ambient air. 
Otherwife very few could efcape ; whereas we found 
this laft time, and upon all fuch occafions, that who- 
ever kept their doors fhut, run no rifque, even if 
the plague were in the next houfe ; and the contadl 
was eafily trac'd in all the accidents, which happen’d 
among the Franks. Comte Caftellane had, for three 
years running, perlons attack’d in the fame room, in 
the months of July and Augufi, notwithftanding all 
poffible precaution us’d in cleanfing the room, and 
even white-wafhing it. At laft, by my own advice 
to his excellency, grounded upon the above theory, 
he built a flight counter-wall ; fince which there has 
been no accident in that room, now five years ago. 
I could give fo many fuch examples, as delajfare 
vale ant Fabium . 
The 
