The answer to this has been already given.—Let any other cause than contagion or infection be supposed, and the difficulty remains equally great. The probability is in favour of contagion, rather than a general disposition of the atmosphere, because in the latter case the disease would, contrary to experience, begin in a great many places at once; but the plague begins in such a secret manner that we scarce know whence it comes. Like fire, or a ferment in liquors, it diffuses itself far and wide, and lastly, like an immense inundation, the source of which is dried up, it seems to lose its power by extending too far, and dies away altogether. We cannot penetrate into the causes of those things, but, without any speculation at all, we can observe that the disease falls upon people of a certain constitution more than others, and this may be of use in preserving ourselves from it, as shall be explained in the next section.
It is still necessary to say something of the infection spreading from one person to another, and being kept off by refraining from communication with the diseased. This indeed naturally follows from its proceeding originally from the cotton: for as all the infected did not touch this cotton, there can be no other cause assigned from its spreading than by communication from one to another; and, therefore, if such communication was cut off, we should naturally think that the disease would not spread. But, in opposition to this, we have already quoted Dr. Moseley giving a long list of convents infected, though they kept themselves strictly shut up. Dr. Russel cites, in favour of prevention by shutting up, two certificates, one by the bishop of Marseilles, the other by the sheriff of the same place. To these he adds the testimony of M. Langeron, who was actively employed throughout the whole time that the plague continued, first as a commodore of the gallies, and afterwards as governor of the town and its dependencies. In opposition to these, however, he takes notice of two passages “in books of acknowledged authority,” which he is at pains to answer; the one is from the Journal already quoted, which says, “and what is unaccountable, those who have shut themselves up most securely in their own houses, and are the most careful to take in nothing without the most exact precautions, are attacked there by the plague, which creeps in no one knows how.” The other passage is taken from the Relation Historique, “that, in the height of the pestilence, the infection penetrated into places which had till then remained inaccessible; that monasteries and houses shut up in the most exact manner were no longer places of security.”
To the former of these our author answers, that “from the manner of stating the case, one would think that all these religious had been close shut up, without any communication with persons without doors; and this was certainly intended by an author who has made remarks upon it; but it will be found, upon looking into the beginning of the very paragraph cited, that the greatest part of them are represented as martyrs who had meritoriously exposed themselves. Of the twelve different orders mentioned on this occasion, the Grand Augustines only are said to have kept in their convent. But, supposing the Augustin convent to have been actually shut up, and in that state infected; it would by no means invalidate the instances brought of the preservation of the convents, the certificates concerning which were granted deliberately, after all was over; whereas the journal, written from day to day, marking circumstances rapidly as they occurred, the author, amongst various other affairs, had not always leisure or opportunity to examine minutely into circumstances. It is in this light I am inclined to consider the houses being infected which took in nothing without the most exact precautions; and the rather, because I met with several instances of the like kind at Aleppo, in the houses of the Christian and Jewish nations: but in the sequel it generally appeared there had been some improper communication carried on by the domestics, unknown to the family at the time.”
“That the atmosphere, in a city so dreadfully circumstanced as Marseilles, may become so highly tainted as to convey the plague into houses shut up, cannot confidently be affirmed to be impossible, by those who hold mediate contagion; and the concurrence of circumstances at that period in Marseilles, renders it highly probable that such accidents happened. But, in general, the pestiferous effluvia once emitted into the air, do not appear to operate at any great distance from their source; and M. Deidier asserts, that two monasteries (from their situation, one near a burial ground, the other near a pest-house) very dangerously situated, remained nevertheless untouched, which he thinks an argument against infection being conveyed by the air.”
From this long and contested account of the manner in which the plague was received into Marseilles, we see how very difficult it must be to come at a true state of facts, when a number of people think it their interest to misrepresent or conceal them. The limits of this treatise will not allow us to follow our author through the numerous details of misrepresentations and unfair methods which the adversaries of the doctrine of contagion have made use of to establish their opinion: neither shall we enter into any discussion concerning the origin of other plagues, as we should in them find the same opposite kinds of evidence without such documents for distinguishing the true from the false as Dr. Russel has produced in the case of Marseilles. A single fact only, mentioned by Mr. Howard in his Treatise on Lazarettos, shall be related, and which, if allowed to be fact, decides the question as effectually as a thousand.
“When the plague raged at London in 1665, it was conveyed to the remote village of Eyam near Tideswell in Derbyshire. In this place it broke out in September 1665, and continued its ravages upwards of a year, when two hundred and fifty of the inhabitants had died of it. The worthy rector, Mr. Mompesson, whose name may rank with those of Cardinal Borromeo of Milan, and the good bishop of Marseilles, at its breaking out, resolved not to quit his parishioners, but used every argument with his wife to quit the infected spot. She, however, refused to forsake her husband, and is supposed to have died of the plague. They sent away their children. Mr. Mompesson constantly employed himself, during the dreadful visitation, in his pastoral office, and preached to his flock in a field, where nature had formed a sort of alcove in a rock, which place still retains the appellation of a church. He survived, and the entries in the parish register relative to this calamity are in his own hand writing, viz.
In 1665, | Sept. | Died 6 | 1666, | May | Died 5 |
| Oct. | 22 | June | 20 | ||
| Nov. | 5 | July | 53 | ||
| Dec. | 7 | Aug. | 78 | ||
1666 | Jan. | 3 | Sept. | 14 | |
| Feb. | 5 | Oct. | 17 | ||
| March | 2 | Nov. | 1 | ||
| April | 12 |
This plague is said to have arisen from a box of clothes sent from London while the distemper was at its height in that city. But whether this be admitted or not, it cannot well be supposed that in a small village there could either be a peculiar constitution of the air, collections of filth, immoderate heat, cold, or in short any general cause from which a plague could be supposed to arise, that would not have affected the country for a great way round. How then came this insulated spot to be so violently affected, except by contagion? No matter whether by clothes or any thing else. The very particular manner in which the numbers who died are recorded, leaves no doubt as to the fact of the distemper having been there; neither is it possible to account for its rise on any other principle than contagion.
Mr. Howard, previous to his going abroad, had been furnished, by Dr. Aikin and Dr. Jebb, with a set of queries relative to the plague, to be put to the physicians in the different countries through which he travelled. This commission he executed with great fidelity and exactness. The physicians to whom he proposed them were, Raymond of Marseilles, physician; Demollins of do. surgeon; Giovanelli, physician to the lazaretto at Leghorn; They, to do. at Malta; Morandi, physician at Venice; Verdoni, at Trieste; Jew physician at Smyrna; Fra. Luigi di Pavia, prior to the hospital of San Antonio at Smyrna. The questions proposed were as follow:
1. Is the infection of the plague frequently received by the French?