The Foundling Hospital[75] is situated in the middle of the city, at the conflux of the Yausa and the Moscua. It occupies a space of ground, at that time only inclosed by a hedge six feet high, whose circumference measures nearly a French league. On this has been erected a building which might easily be made to contain five thousand foundlings. That part of it which was finished in 1769, contained one thousand children and three hundred adults; the rest, consisting of masters, servants, workmen, and soldiers, who amounted to nearly one hundred, lived in houses built of wood adjoining the stone edifice and standing within the inclosure. This inclosure had three gates.
In the month of July, as soon as I found that the plague had spread itself in the town, I requested the Governors of the hospital to order all the gates to be shut, excepting that where the porter lived; and not to suffer any person to come in or go out, without permission from the principal inspector. I further requested them to lay in a large stock, from places not yet infected, of flour, cloth, linen, shoes, and other necessaries. In the month of August, when the plague was raging with great fury, it was no longer permitted for any one to enter but myself. Persons who lived out of the enclosure were hired to purchase all the necessaries of life, and to carry letters. I gave the porter some written directions, in which I put down every thing he was to allow to enter, and under what precautions. The butcher threw the meat into large tubs filled with vinegar, from which it was afterwards taken out by the under-cook. I prohibited the admission of furs, wool, feathers, cotton, hemp, paper, linen, and silk; but I allowed sugar-loaves to be received, after taking off the paper and packthread. Letters were pricked through with a pin and afterwards dipped in vinegar, and dried in the smoke produced by burning juniper-wood. The inhabitants of the building were allowed to speak to their relations and friends, who stood at a certain distance out of the gate[76]. Being obliged to purchase two hundred pair of boots and shoes, in the month of October; I ordered them to be immersed for some hours in vinegar, and afterwards dried.
I visited all the sick in the house twice every day; the sound were examined by two surgeons night and morning, who informed me whenever they found any of them indisposed. Whenever any symptoms occurred in a patient which appeared to me doubtful, I kept such patient apart from the rest, until I was satisfied the disorder was not the plague. In this manner I detected the plague seven times among the soldiers[77] and workmen belonging to the Foundling Hospital; but as I separated them on the first appearance of the symptoms, they none of them infected the others, except the master chimney-sweeper, who gave it to his apprentice. After the month of July, we ceased to admit any more foundlings or pregnant women. I proposed to the Governors to hire, in the mean while, a house for this purpose in the suburbs, which was not determined upon until the month of October[78]. At this time there still continued to die in the town above a thousand persons in a day. I had the children who were brought to this quarantine-house, stripped to the skin; after which their clothes were burnt, their bodies washed all over with vinegar and water, and new clothes put upon them. I kept them for the space of a fortnight in three rooms detached from the rest; if, after that time, no signs of the plague appeared among them, they were put (having previously changed their clothes) each in the order in which he finished this first term of probation, in the common dwelling-rooms of the quarantine-house; here they remained another fortnight, before they were removed to the Great Hospital. I visited every day these children and the lying-in women[79]. One infant was brought with a pestilential bubo, and two others, during the time of their quarantine, had the plague with buboes, as mentioned in a former part of this treatise. By putting them in separate rooms along with their nurses, the contagion was prevented from spreading[80]. I had thus the happiness of rescuing from death about one hundred and fifty children[81], brought to the quarantine-house after the month of October. In the Spring of 1772, every thing was restored to its former footing.
THE END.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Whatever doubts might have been entertained, as to the real nature of the yellow fever, on its first appearance in North America, I believe almost all physicians are now agreed that it is the plague, with such modifications as are easily referable to difference of climate and different mode of living.
[2] This can hardly fail to be the case until the American government shall have recourse to some of those vigorous measures for eradicating the contagion which are mentioned in the following pages.