In the cases related, there appeared some facts as to the time the matter of the pestilential contagion takes before it comes into action. Other facts shew, that, in different people, and under different circumstances, there is the greatest variety in this. The lazaretto at Alexandria was infected by the admission of an Italian merchant, and the guard there, consisting of 14 men, caught the disease, but were attacked on different days. The provost’s guard and his prisoners at Alexandria caught the infection from a deserter confined among them, and the disease among these people appeared at very different periods.
Mr Rice relates two cases on this part of the subject, which appear worthy of detail: he says, “we have had proofs, that the pestilential virus remains a considerable time in the habit, without exerting its influence or shewing its virulence. A striking case occurred lately: a Sepoy was sent to the pest-house from the hospital of the 7th regiment with plague; his wife could not be prevented from accompanying him, where she attended and nursed him. The Sepoy died, and the woman was ordered into quarantine; however, she escaped, and after some days search she was discovered near the regimental hospital of the 7th. As this woman had the greatest reluctance to going to quarantine, a centinel was put over her in the hut where she was, and all communication with her was stopped: she continued in good health till the tenth day after her escape from the pest-house; in the afternoon of this day, she was attacked with fever, in a few hours after, the inguinal glands became painful, and she was carried to the pest-house at El Hammed.”
“Another case bore a great affinity to the above: a Sepoy came into the pest-house to attend his wife: the man was sent into quarantine, and he continued well there, till the seventeenth day, on which plague-symptoms appeared, and he was sent to the pest-house.”
Of the symptoms of the plague, fever, though not always present, seemed the most constant.
At the end of the season, at Cairo, at Ghiza, and at Suez, cases appeared without any observable fever. When it did appear, as already noticed, the type at different seasons, and in different parts of Egypt, was very various. At the pest-house at Rosetta and El Hammed, many of the cases, admitted from October to January, had the accompanying fever intermittent and of the quotidian type. This I believe to be a new fact in the history of the disease. For some time in January, February, and in some part of March, the fever had regular remissions. After this period, it generally appeared of the typhus form at Aboukir, except in the detachment of the 26th Light Dragoons, all of whom were young healthy men, and in them Mr O’Farrel observed, “that there was much re-action, and that the delirium was of the kind denominated phrenitis.”
At the pest-house, at Rahaminia, Mr Whyte observed, that all his patients had pluritic complaints.
The second symptom in order was the tremor of the limbs. Mr Price says, “that bubo and pyrexia are not so essential parts of the diagnosis, as tremor of the upper extremities,” and
3dly, The affection of the head, which was sometimes phrenitis, and sometimes typhomania. In a great majority of Mr Price’s, Mr Rice’s, and Mr Whyte’s, cases there was much nervous affection; in one, the risus sardonicus. Mr Adrian says, the nervous affection, in many cases, was very remarkable; in several cases, it resembled the description, given by authors, of that nervous affection produced by the bites of mad or poisonous animals, an almost universal tremor.