FOOTNOTES
[1124] [This opinion is not generally admitted by the most experienced medical men in this country. It is a disputed point whether the plague is even contagious; and the mass of evidence is in favour of its being so occasionally, but that the plague is usually not propagated in this manner. The disappearance of this pest from our own and most other countries of Europe is undoubtedly owing to the much greater attention paid to drainage, ventilation, and the prevention of the accumulation of filth in the streets, &c. When the peculiar atmospheric conditions upon which its diffusion depends are present, quarantine has proved insufficient to prevent its propagation.]
[1125] The oldest plague of which we find any account in history, that so fully described by Thucydides, book ii., was expressly said to have come from Egypt. Evagrius in his Histor. Ecclesiast. iv. 29, and Procopius De Bello Persico, ii. 22, affirm also that the dreadful plague in the time of the emperor Justinian was likewise brought from Egypt. It is worthy of remark, that on both these occasions, the plague was traced even still further than Egypt; for Thucydides and the writers above-quoted say that the infection first broke out in Ethiopia, and spread thence into Egypt and other countries.
[1126] They may be found in Muratori Scriptores Rerum Italic. tom. xvi. p. 560, and xviii. p. 82, thence copied into Chenot, p. 147. See also Boccacio, Decamer. Amst. 1679, p. 2.
[1127] [“The Venetians seem to have been the first who established quarantine in their dominions about the year 1484, soon after the Turks became their neighbours in Europe; the constant intercourse which they maintained with those powerful neighbours, either in war or by commerce, rendering it necessary for them to take this and other precautions against the introduction of this contagion into their country.”]
[1128] De Peste, in Mead’s Opera Medica.
[1129] Everything said by Le Bret on this subject may be found equally full in D. C. Tentori, Saggio sulla Storia Civile, &c., della Republica di Venezia. Ven. 1786, 8vo, t. vi. p. 391. As Sandi in his Principi di Storia Civile della Republica di Venezia, 9 vols. 4to, 1755–1769, gives the same account, lib. viii. cap. 8. art. 4, they must have both got their information from the same source.
[1130] Historia Vinitiana. Vinegia, 1552, 4to, lib. i. p. 10.
[1131] L’Hoggidi, overo il mondo non peggiore, ne più calamitoso del passato. Ven. 1627, 8vo, p. 610.
[1132] De Republica Venetorum, lib. iv.
[1133] Thesaurus Antiquitatum Italiæ, v. 2, p. 241.
[1134] Topografia Veneta, overo Descrizione della Stato Veneto. Venezia, 1786, 8vo, iv. p. 263.
[1135] Lib. i. cap. 11, p. 65.
[1136] Account of the principal Lazarettos, Lond. 1789, 4to, p. 12.
[1137] Cronica di Verona, in Verona, 1747, 4to, iii. p. 93.
[1138] See G. W. Wedelii exercitatio de quadragesima medica, in his Centuria Exercitationum Medico-philologicarum. Jenæ, 1701, 4to, decas iv. p. 16. Wedel mentions various diseases in which Hippocrates determines the fortieth day to be critical. Compare Rieger in Hippocratis Aphoris. Hag. Com. 1767, 8vo, i. p. 221.
[1139] Martini Lange Rudimenta Doctrinæ de Peste. Offenbachii 1791, 8vo. See Gottingische Anzeigen von gelehrt. Sachen, 1791, p. 1799.