Were this a proper place for entering into a discussion of Lavoisier’s nomenclature, it might easily be shown that the terms are not more proper than those which preceded them; but no real inconvenience can arise from the propriety or impropriety of a mere name. It is the resemblance of the terms to one another, and the facility with which mistakes may be made, that gives just ground of complaint. Nor is it any just reason to accuse a person of want of judgment or carelessness because he hath mistaken these terms. We see that even Dr. Monro has not attended to every circumstance; and if a man of his experience and accuracy hath been inaccurate in this respect, what is to be expected from others? How easily may the words sulfate, sulfite, sulphuret and sulphure, be mistaken for one another, either in writing or conversation! Yet a mistake of this kind would totally pervert the meaning of the person who used it. The scripture finds fault with those who make people offenders for a word; but here we are in danger of being made offenders for a letter. In short, taking into account the inconveniences arising from this nomenclature itself, the numberless corrections and amendments (no matter whether real or imaginary) to which it may be subjected, and the number of others totally different from it which may arise, I cannot help looking upon the introduction of it into chemistry as an evil of the first magnitude; an evil which cannot be remedied by any art, but must continually become worse and worse.
SECTION IV.
Of the best Methods of Preventing the Plague.
THESE methods may be classed in the following manner: 1. Those most proper for avoiding the infection, supposing the disease to be infectious. 2. The proper mode of resisting or removing those local causes which may give rise to it, or may co-operate with the infectious matter in giving greater force to the disease, should it happen to be introduced; and, 3. The best method of preparing the body for resisting pestilential attacks, should we happen to be so situated that no external method of defence could be used.
With regard to the first of these intentions the flying from places infected has been so universally recommended, and so generally received, that the precept has been made up into the following proverbial Latin distich:
“Hæc tria tabificam tollunt adverbia pestem
Mox, longe, tarde, cede, recede, redi.”
These words prevent the plague’s infectious pain,
Go quick, fly far, and slow return again.
This maxim hath been put in execution in all ages, but often with so little regard to humanity that it cannot by any means be recommended without very considerable limitation. The reparation of the sick from all promiscous intercourse with the sound, in times of pestilence, seems to be dictated by common sense; but this may be done without killing them, or leaving them to expire in the miserable state to which they are reduced by the disease. Mr. Howard informs us that in some places ships which have the plague on board are chased away and burnt; and instances of cruelty with regard to infested individuals have been formerly mentioned. Dr. Mertens is of opinion that cutting off all the communication between the infected and healthy is the only means of preventing the disease from spreading. The good of this practice was observed in one of the hospitals at Moscow. All the avenues to it were shut up, but one which was strictly guarded, and every suspected article prohibited from entering. Infected clothes and utensils were burned, and the houses where the sick had lived were purified by the fumes of vinegar and gun-powder.
In this mode of prevention it is of the utmost consequence to ascertain the distance to which the contagion extends; in the next place to know whether by means of clothes, cotton or other kinds of merchandise it may be imported from one place to another; and in the third place how long the infection may remain in these kinds of goods; so that people may know when the danger is over. As to the distance, it seems to be generally agreed, that it is but small. Some of the answers to Mr. Howard by the physicians of whom he inquired, have been already related. Of the infection of the plague he speaks in the following manner:
“In my opinion this distemper is not generally to be taken by the touch, any more than the gaol-fever or small-pox; but either by inoculation, or by taking in with the breath the putrid effluvia which hover round the infected body; and which, when admitted, set the whole mass of blood into fermentation, and sometimes so suddenly and violently as to destroy its whole texture, and to produce putrefaction and death in 48 hours. Those effluvia are capable of being carried from one place to another, upon any substance where what is called scent can lodge; as upon wool, cotton, &c. and in the same manner that the smell of tobaco is carried from one place to another.