From the lazaretto the disease made its way into the city, and began to appear about the 20th of June. By what means it was introduced is not directly said; but it seems to have been by smuggling infected goods. In the beginning of July it began to spread; but a kind of pause having taken place between the 12th and 23d, the physicians were reproached with having mistaken the distemper. During this supposed interval, however, it was discovered on the 18th of July that the disease had spread in a certain part of the city. A surgeon, employed to examine into the matter, declared the distemper to be the worm-fever; and about the 23d the council of health were informed of the death of fourteen persons in that quarter, and of several others falling sick. The surgeon still adhered to his opinion, but a physician declared it to be the true plague. About the end of the month it had got into the suburbs; four physicians declared it to be the true plague, but their report was not believed; they were insulted in the streets, and it was not until some of the inhabitants of better rank were taken ill, that the true state of the matter gained credit.
“Such (says Dr. Russel) was the rise of the plague at first, and its progress afterwards in the months of June and July; whence it appears, that persons on board the suspected ship, those employed in airing the goods, a surgeon and a priest, who attended the sick, were among the first infected; that the passengers from the several ships, all of which ships, the first excepted, brought foul patents, were, together with their baggage, admitted into the city, after preforming a quarentine of little more than eighteen days; that the distemper from the 20th of June till towards the end of July advanced very slowly, and sometimes seemed to pause; that it attacked chiefly the poorer sort of people, and was found in distinct quarters of the city; and lastly, that, during the first forty days, few or none of the infected recovered; a circumstance entirely consonant to what was observed in the beginning of the plague at Aleppo.”
Three other facts are mentioned by our author, viz. that the disease was evidently communicated by infection; that those who were careful to seclude themselves from all communication with the sick and with infected goods, were not infected; and lastly, that the disease, which began to rage violently in August, continued to do so through that and the following month, but declined fast in the months of October and November, and seemed to cease in the middle of winter. Some accidents happened in 1721, between the months of February and July, which gave occasional alarm; but the distemper did not spread, and ceased entirely after the summer solstice of that year.
To all this, however, objections have been made. 1. That the irregular seasons of the former year, a bad crop, and unwholesome aliment, had produced a malignant epidemic, all which, joined to the popular dread of contagion, were sufficient to produce the plague without any imported infection. To this Dr. Russel replies, that these positions, assumed as facts, had no existence; for which he refers to the publications of the times. 2. It was objected that there were instances of the plague in Marseilles before the 25th of May. These instances are only five in number, produced by M. Deidier, “who saw not the cases himself, yet (says Dr. Russel) from the very imperfect accounts he had been able to glean, he thought himself justified in declaring they bore all the marks of the true plague. Nothing (adds the Doctor) but extreme partiality to an hypothesis could have led any one practised in the plague, into such a declaration; the cases bearing every internal mark of belonging to a different class from the plague. I shall endeavour to show this in a few words.
“Of the five supposed infected patients, three recovered, two died, and all had eruptions. One who died had a parotis (the most ambiguous of all pestilential tumours) without any concurrence, so far as appears, of pestilential symptoms. The tumour had appeared six days before the woman’s death, but how long she had been sick remains unknown. The other died the 16th or 17th day, a very unusual period in the plague. She also had a parotis, which did not make its appearance till the 10th or 11th day of the disease. No pestilential symptoms whatever are mentioned. Of the three who recovered, one was very ill with a fever and carbuncle; but neither the invasion nor the duration of the disease are mentioned. Another had a carbuncle and a small tumour on the thigh; and the third (which bears the nearest resemblance to a very slight infection) had also a bubo in the thigh; but the tumours in neither of these patients are described in such a manner as distinguishes them from ordinary tumours; and the apothecary, who gives the account from memory, had in all likelihood never seen a pestilential bubo before.”
“Of the persons infected for some time after the arrival of the ships from the Levant, none had eruptions, and all perished after a few days illness; which agrees entirely with what was observed at Aleppo in the beginning of the plague: hardly any of the sick recovered, and the major part died in three or four days, without any appearance of buboes. Upon the whole, therefore, I think it very clearly established, that the plague did not exist in France before the month of May, 1720. Prior to M. Deidier, however, I find a M. Pons had endeavoured to prove that the plague was in Marseilles, not only before the month of May 1720, but even in the preceding year. I have not had an opportunity of examining that gentleman’s book.”
3. It is objected that the disease was not brought from the Levant by infected goods. “Captain Chataud’s vessel, supposed to have brought the infected goods, arrived with a clean patent, or bill of health, having left the coast of Syria before the plague broke out there; she consequently cannot reasonably be thought to have transported the plague, which was not in the ports from whence she came.”
To this Dr. Russel answers, that on commercial accounts the Turks carefully conceal the appearance of the plague from the Europeans. Should reports of accidents get abroad, they are variously and contradictorily represented, and pestilential marks and tumours fraudulently concealed. Though Chataud obtained a clean patent, the plague broke out soon after his departure, and three vessels with foul patents arrived at Marseilles a few days after Chataud. “To this (says Dr. Russel) it may be further added, that, notwithstanding his clean patent, persons acquainted with the Levant will think it far from improbable, that the plague might actually have been in Sidon when he sailed, though unknown to the magistrate, by whom the patents are granted. . . . A clean bill of health imports that the place has been free from plague, and all suspicion of plague, for a certain space of time; but the clean patents of the two first arriving from the Levant, after the cessation of the plague, are, according to Mr. Howard, deemed foul at Marseilles, and the passengers are obliged to perform a quarantine of thirty-one days. The French consuls lying under an obligation to insert in their patents a detail of circumstances, it must appear strange, when the condition of Syria at that time is considered, how Captain Chataud should have obtained a clean patent.”
Though this must certainly be deemed a sufficient answer to the objection, Dr. Russel goes on to give an account of what had happened the preceding year, when the plague had raged violently at Aleppo; and shows that, from the condition of the whole coast of Syria, a return of the plague was certainly to be expected; that the French consuls could not be ignorant of this, neither could the council of health at Marseilles be unacquainted with what had happened at Aleppo the preceding year. “The facility with which the patents seem to have been issued in Turky, and the partial indulgence of the council to Chataud’s ship, notwithstanding the very extraordinary mortality which had avowedly happened on the voyage, together with their easy confidence afterwards in the reports of the surgeon of the lazaretto, can only be accounted for from the prevailing influence of private commercial interest over a sense of official duty.”
Our author next proceeds to take notice of what happened during this ship’s voyage to Marseilles. On the 31st of January he left the coast of Syria with a clean patent, before the plague broke out. On the 25th of May he arrived at Marseilles, from Sidon, Tripoli and Cyprus. On the voyage, or at Leghorn, he lost six of the crew; but, by the certificates of the physicians of health at Leghorn, these died only of malignant fevers caused by unwholesome provisions. These last words in the Traite de la Peste are said to have been interpolated at Marseilles. At any rate, as Dr. Russel observes, they could relate only to those who died at Leghorn, not to the others, whom the physicians had not seen.