The other account is much less favourable. According to it, Chataud “left Sidon the 31st of January with a clean patent. The plague discovered itself there a few days after his departure. Having sustained some damage by bad weather, he put into Tripoli, where he embarked some merchandise; he took in also some Turks, passengers for Cyprus, together with their luggage. Soon after the ship had left Tripoli, one of these passengers fell sick and died. Two of the sailors employed to throw the corpse overboard desisted at the desire of the pilot, and the rest of the ceremony was performed by the other Mahommedan passengers; the ropes with which the body was lowered down, being by way of precaution thrown into the sea. Within a few days the two sailors who had handled the corpse were taken sick and died. At Cyprus the ship put her remaining passengers on shore, and made a very short stay. Soon after her departure from that island, a third sailor and the surgeon died of an illness of a few days duration. The captain, justly alarmed by these accidents, ordered the bedding and other things used by the deceased to be thrown into the sea; and kept himself carefully separate from the crew during the remainder of his voyage. Some time after this three more sailors fell sick, and, there being no surgeon on board, the vessel put into Leghorn, where the three sick men died, and the physician and surgeon of the lazaretto declared the disease to be a malignant pestilential fever.”
Our author considers the above account as a full proof of the plague being imported by Chataud’s vessel: he declines entering into the question about the possibility of importing contagion in merchandise. How this might take place has already been explained; and the present instance of its having been imported is as clearly proved as can be expected. A collateral proof, with regard to the contagion of the small-pox, we have from Dr. Huxham. A beggar, ill of that disease, approached a certain town in England, but was not suffered to enter, for fear of infection. The beggar died, and the infected clothes were burnt at some distance from the town; but the smoke being blown upon it by the wind, the small-pox in a short time made its appearance, beginning in that part upon which the smoke was blown. This clearly proves that one species of contagion may adhere to clothes, and is a very strong presumption that any other may do the same. It also shows that contagion, when once produced, is by no means easily destroyed; and consequently that all kinds of purification, even when used with the utmost care and diligence, are scarce sufficient to ensure safety.
It would now be superfluous to enter farther into the subject of the plague being communicated by infected goods, did not our author quote a work of Dr. Pye of London, in which the latter from the very Journal (which has been used as containing arguments in favour of contagion) makes inferences directly opposite. “The facts related in this journal (says Dr. Pye) seemed to me to make so clearly against the modern doctrine of contagion, that if this writer had not mentioned them as undeniable instances in his favour, I should not have thought there had been any persons here in England so dull of understanding, or so much blinded with prejudice, as to stand in need of having these facts put into a more obvious light: but, having this occasion, I shall consider them more largely than otherwise I would have done, and show that the porters, who died in the lazaretto at Marseilles, received no hurt or infection from the goods.
“To leave no room for objection, I shall take notice, that a guard of quarantine died on board Chataud’s ship the 12th of June; but, as this officer was no ways concerned either in unloading or opening the goods, he could receive no hurt from them; and besides, this must have been fourteen or fifteen days after the goods had been carried out of the ship into the lazaretto. Further, six of their men are said to die at Leghorn; but the town of Leghorn was not infected from thence, which would have been more likely if there had been any infection in the case, than that Marseilles should be afterwards infected.
“If any infection or infectious aura can be supposed to be packed up, and brought in goods, such infection or infectious aura must necessarily issue forth from them in greatest abundance, and with the greatest force, at the first opening or unpacking of them; and, as it must continue to fly off every moment, and be thereby continually diminishing, it is likewise certain, that in a very few days the goods must be in a great measure, if not entirely, cleared of it. Wherefore, if the porters could have been infected from the goods at all, it must have been at the first opening of them: but, even according to this journal, the porters that first fell sick were not taken ill before the 23d of June, whereas Chataud’s ship arrived the 25th of May preceding; so that the goods of that ship, in purifying which the porter first mentioned was employed, had been airing and purifying for twenty-six or twenty-eight days before this accident happened; and it cannot be conceived that after so long a time they should not have been entirely purged of all infection or infectious aura, if any could have been brought with them. Or if it can be supposed, which I think impossible, that any part might still be left, it must withal be supposed so much less than at first, as not to be capable of doing, those porters especially, the least hurt: to suppose otherwise would be to argue that the same man who some days before had received and borne a very great quantity and force without any injury, could then be killed by a quantity and force infinitely less.
According to the report of merchants, Frenchmen are not subject to the plague in Turky; and it cannot be conceived that so small a quantity of infectious air as can be packed up and brought in a bale of goods, should destroy them in France, or in an air and climate distant and different; when the whole atmosphere of the same infectious air is found not to injure them in very infected places, and wherein it is allowed to be bred and generated.”
Thus far Dr Pye.—Let us now hear Dr. Russel in answer.
“The death of the quarantine officer was mentioned in order to leave no room for objection; but still it may be objected that he has omitted the death of the sailor on the 27th of May, and asserted, in contradiction to the journal, that the former six sailors died at Leghorn. That Leghorn was more likely to be infected than Marseilles, is a strange notion. The ship had landed no goods there, nor had any intercourse with the shore; for the physician who visits the sick on board, remains at a distance from the ship, in a boat, and the dead bodies are sunk in the sea. As to the circumstance of the goods of Chataud’s vessel being all in the lazaretto before the 12th of June, it is a supposition to be attributed to Dr. Pye’s unacquaintance with matters of that kind; for it is impossible a ship which arrived the 25th of May should discharge the whole of her cargo in two or three days. The dispatch would have been miraculous, considering the ship lay near two leagues from the lazaretto, and was unloaded, and the boats navigated, by her own crew. It did not occur to Dr. Pye, that some time, previous to the vessels beginning to unload, is taken up in examination and other forms at Pomegue, and the council of health. The loss of six men on the voyage was an extraordinary circumstance, that required deliberation; and it appears that on the 29th, after the death of the sailor on board Chataud’s vessel, the council determined the quarantine of his cargo to be forty days, commencing from the landing of the last bale; which was double the time usually allowed for a ship with a clean patent. It is very probable, therefore, that the ship did not begin to unload till after the 29th of May, and possibly had not finished when the quarantine officer died, the 12th of June, who must have been taken ill two or three days before.
“In regard to the time requisite for the complete evaporation of the infectious aura, in what proportionate gradation its activity is impaired by ventilation, and the specific quantity required to produce effect on the human body, they are matters which I apprehend will not readily be admitted to be clearly and certainly known. That the first porters were not taken ill before the 23d of June, is very true; but that the goods had been airing and purifying for twenty-six or twenty-eight days, has been shown above to be an error. The Doctor also makes two other suppositions equally erroneous. The first, that the whole of the cotton contained in a number of bales is equally imbued with infectious aura; the second, that all the bales of a ship’s cargo are opened nearly about the same time. But, as the cotton contained in these bales may not only have been collected from different villages at different times, but packed up under various circumstances relative to the materials used for embalage, and the persons employed in embaling or steeving them; it may easily be conceived how the cargo of a ship, coming even from a place where the plague actually rages, may be only partially infected, or not infected at all. The warmest advocate for contagion never contended for every bale of a ship’s cargo being equally infectious. As to the airing of the bales, it is a laborious and a tedious process. Where there is a considerable number, it takes up several days to open and arrange them, goods of different kinds must be disposed separately, accounts taken, and the cordage, &c. laid up with care where it may be found again. The laborious part of these operations is performed by the porters, who also transport the goods from the water side to the enclosure where they are to be aired: and, as the days of quarantine do not begin to be reckoned till all the goods are landed, the porters for some days at the beginning are sufficiently employed in receiving and arranging the cargo, that being the business requiring the first dispatch. When these circumstances are considered, it will appear no extravagant supposition, that some of the last opened bales of Chataud’s cargo might still retain enough of infectious aura to infect the porter on the 23d of June. To set this retardment, almost unavoidable in the opening of bales, in a still clearer light, it should be observed, that, by the regulations at Marseilles, all suspected goods are subject to what is termed sereines; that is, a certain number of bales are taken out of the hold, and, being opened at both ends, are exposed to the air for two, three, or six days, by way of trial, in order to see if any signs of infection should appear among those employed in handling the merchandise. When these have been aired, more or less, according to circumstances, another parcel is opened and exposed to ventilation in like manner: so that, according to the burden of the ship, there may be several of these sereines, each of several days duration. In this manner, independent of accidental impediments from wind and weather, in sending the goods from the ship, it maybe supposed, were it at all necessary to make the supposition, that the porters, not only on the 23d of June, but on the 7th and 8th of July, were infected upon opening some new bales. As to the porter being infected by goods from another ship, Dr. Pye thinks it impossible, because the ship had been twelve days in port, and the goods must have been eight or nine days in airing and purifying: had he been acquainted with the practice of the sereines in quarantine, he would have been at no loss to make the accident agree exactly with his notion of the infectious aura. . . . The plain matter of fact, as it stands in the journal, is this, that six porters, employed in purifying suspected merchandise from the Levant, died of the plague; and their death was followed by that of the surgeon who attended them, and part of his family.”
From this the reader will be able to judge how far the question is decided in favour of the fact that the plague at Marseilles was actually produced by imported contagion. It seems needless to follow our author through his investigation of those facts which his adversaries have misrepresented; for these must of course be in his favour; every misrepresentation by a disputant being plainly an abandonment of his cause. Indeed the argument against contagion at that time was properly but one, and is set forth in no stronger language now than formerly. Even as long ago as 1665 Dr. Russel quotes one Gadbury an astrologer stating the difficulty as strongly, and giving a solution of it as clearly, upon his principles, as the best modern theorists can do upon theirs. “If the pestilence, (says Mr. Gadbury) be infectious, and really catching in itself, it must be so equally to all persons that approach it, or that it approacheth; or else it must be infectious to some particular persons only. If it be infectious to all persons, or catching to all alike, then all persons, that come into the sight or within the scent of it, must necessarily be subject unto it. If not infectious unto all, but unto some particular persons only, I say then it ought not to be deemed or esteemed infectious at all, at least not any more infectious than are all other diseases, viz. small-pox, scurvy, pleurisy, ague, gout, &c. since (though the notion of infection be laid aside) there is not a person born into the world that hath not at some time of his life (as his nativity shall truly show) some one disease or other. Never was any person subject to violent diseases, as plague, &c. but had a violent nativity to show it, and e contra.”