The small-pox, that plague which once carried off so great a proportion of the population of Europe, now bids fair to be expunged from the catalogue of diseases.
May we not indulge a hope, that, as the intercourse of civilized Europe, with the countries of which the plague is now the scourge, becomes more regular and intimate, we may be enabled to extend to them our discoveries and improvements, and so direct them to the means of divesting the plague of its terrors, and reducing the mortality from it to the scale of that of fever and the small-pox in Europe?
Egypt has been called the cradle of the sciences. From this we acknowledge, that the arts were derived to Greece, and subsequently to every part of the world. It would surely be the noblest gratification, if in return, at this period, Europe, by extending her benefits and improvements to Egypt and to Greece, could free them from the most cruel scourge of countries, once the most civilized and polished in the world. It would in some measure compensate and console them for the low state of degradation into which they have fallen.
All that I have to say of the plague will tend to diminish the dread which has hitherto been entertained of it.
A formidable disease undoubtedly it is; but, when we hear how much of the population of Persia, Arabia, Turkey, Syria, Egypt, and Barbary, is now and then swept off, all must not be laid to the account of the plague, as if its ravages admitted of no remedy. The experience of the French and English, in Egypt, will now convince Europe, that much of the vast mortality, in the above countries, is to be ascribed to the gross ignorance in which they are immersed.
Were typhus, our jail or hospital fever, to be imported into a town of Egypt, we can hardly conceive how it could ever be eradicated by the natives. Whenever the small-pox does appear in that country, it proves a dreadfully-destructive disease. The structure of their houses and plans of their streets are calculated for the production of disease, and the preservation and concentration of contagion.
It is a matter of no little consolation to us, that we know the means, not only of excluding the plague from our own country, but that, when our armies are stationed in the countries where the disease is endemic, we can arrest the progress of the contagion, and with certainty eradicate it.
The plague made its first appearance, in the army from India, in the middle of September, 1801. From its early appearance the natives were very much alarmed, and prophesied a dreadful season of plague. They have observed, that, when it breaks out before December, they have always a generally-prevailing and a very destructive disease.
The number of cases which appeared in the Indian army, from the 15th of September, 1801, to the 15th of June, 1802, is seen in an accompanying table.