The celebrated plague-water was composed of master-wort, angelica, peony, and butter-bur, viper-grass, Virginia snake-root, rue, rosemary, balm, carduus, water-germander, marygold, dragon-blood, goats’-rue, and mint, infused in spirits of wine.
It appears manifest from all the evidence adduced by the contending theorists, that we may come to the following corollaries:
1. Plague may generally be considered as arising from contagion.
2. The spread and decline of the disease is influenced by local peculiarities and revolutions in atmospheric constitution.
3. It appears probable, that under peculiar local circumstances, it may have arisen spontaneously, without having been introduced by contagion; but this invasion must be considered of very rare occurrence.
4. Although transmitted by contagion, a certain distance preserves the healthy from the contamination of the diseased.
5. The enforcement of a limit of separation must be considered indispensable in all our sanitary regulations, in the framing of which great attention must be paid to discriminate between contagion and infection—two sources of distemper essentially different from each other.
Although these precautions are pointed out by the result of long and unbiassed experience, they will in all probability be solely applicable to the plague: for we have every reason to believe that these sanitary measures will not prove efficient against the invasion of cholera, the yellow fever, and other diseases, which are by no means proved to be infectious or contagious. Without entering into the discussion, I feel no hesitation in giving it, as my decided opinion, that the cholera and yellow fever are not contagious.