Pestis. This febrile demon cannot now be called one of the mortal epidemicks of Europe, except in the south-east extremity, inhabited by the Turks. The two greatest pestilences on record, happened in the sixth and fourteenth centuries of our era; which, with more barbarous havock than that of Goths or Saracens, overwhelmed millions in three quarters of the globe in one indiscriminate massacre. In London, before the general conflagration in 1666, of one half nearly of the old city, the plague was very frequent: but since that event, or at the most two or three years after, it has been exterminated and banished from us. That fortunate disaster which consumed a magazine of putrefaction; together with widened streets, ventilation, cleanliness, and many other causes, have all contributed to the extinction of this exotick incendiary. For it is well known, that pestilential miasma has been preserved dormant many years in porous materials. From 1592 to 1665, the plague appears to have had annually more or less share in the mortality of the British metropolis; and adding together the different periods of its duration, amounts to twenty-five years. In 1665, which is the most furious pestilence in the London annals, the deaths amounted to 100,000; but in the eight preceding years, to only 113. Registers, in other parts of Europe, prove, that this disease has committed direful carnage since our emancipation. At Marseilles they can enumerate twenty general plagues, which have successively laid waste that populous city. Many other European cities and towns, during the last and present century, and especially those bordering on the Mediterranean, have, in a very short space of time, severely smarted by pestilence, and have been nearly depopulated.
At present, in all the Mediterranean ports they are, from fatal experience, scrupulously vigilant to guard, by a circumvallation of alarm posts, against the pestilential infection, and the clandestine entry of infected goods or merchandize. It rarely now gains admittance, by stealth into any of the European ports; (Constantinople excepted) or even if imported to our shores, the wise precautions and regulations, enacted by Quarantines, soon check its irruption and progress. This is a most interesting epoch and improvement in the police of modern states; for the original institution and rough draft of which, about 300 years ago, we are indebted to the Venetians. The political ordinances, however, enacted for the exclusion and suppression of pestilential contagion, were, until the present century, extremely erroneous and impolitick. Formerly, the plague in London, and in most other European cities, where it was permitted to sojourn, was rendered infinitely more terrifick and destructive by injudicious legislative regulations; especially by the barbarous sacrifice, and absurd policy of sick and sound immured together, with a forlorn motto on their doors, until all were dead or recovered. This was an effectual discouragement against an early alarm which, as in cases of fire, is of the utmost importance. It is evident, by the London bills, that a mere handful, at any time, died in the publick pest-house; consequently, every corner of the city was polluted with infection.
True plague is now chiefly chained down to Constantinople, and to Grand Cairo in Egypt, the two original, or at least one of the hotbeds and volcanos of pestilence; to several of the maritime towns of Asia and Africa situated on the Archipelago and Mediterranean; as Smyrna, Aleppo, Tripoli, Tunis, Algiers, &c. In many of these cities the pestilential miasma is hatched and accumulated into venomous malignity: it is in some nearly an annual, or triennial epidemick. At this day, plague almost solely wreaks its venom on the Mahometan nations, whose prejudices and ignorance, rivetted by religious and predestinarian absurdities, give licence and activity to its imperious domination. From such implicit and enthusiastick submission to the tenets of the Alcoran, joined to gross stupidity in science and philosophy, the Mahometans are encouraged, defenceless and rash, to brave this most malignant and terrible of the febrile host.
Fortunately for mankind, the pestilential contagion spreads to a very small distance through the air, without some contact or adhesion to infected goods and porous materials; or by personal communication and intercourse of the sound with the diseased. The atmosphere is not tainted to any considerable distance. A neighbour barricading himself within his house, at a few yards distance from infection, may escape unhurt. If pestilential contagion could be so suddenly and widely scattered over a kingdom as epidemical influenza, the earth, in a few months, would be converted into an enormous church-yard. It is not like some other exotick poisons of the exanthematous order, after enduring which once, mankind are rendered invulnerable: the plague, as well as putrid fever, may attack the same person repeatedly. What proportion die or recover, I cannot ascertain; and indeed the prophylactic or preventitive, is infinitely the most important indication. Its invariable characteristic features are buboes, carbuncles, and petechiæ. The general progress of the symptoms are, great abasement of strength and of spirits, apprehension of death, dejected countenance, and wildness of the eyes; nausea, vomiting of bile; headach, giddiness, delirium; weak irregular pulse; petechiæ, hæmorrhages; fetid breath and excretions; buboes or boils in the inguinal, axillary, or jugular lymphatick glands; and appearing early, or in the progress of the disease; besides gangrenous carbuncles in different parts. According to the virulence of the contagion, and other co-operating causes, the disease may be fatal in a few hours, a few days, or in one, two, or three weeks. The poison arrested in the lymphatic glands and suppurating, is a favourable presage. Domestick animals, as quadrupeds and fowls, are liable to the infection, and to be changed into carrion.
Sweating Sickness,
ephemera sudatoria et elodes, cannot now be considered as an epidemick cause of mortality. Somewhat more than 300 years ago, this singular contagious and vagrant disease burst out, for the first time, in the army of Henry VII. in his return to England from an expedition against France; and in four hours sickness, numbers were exterminated: but by keeping warm in bed, under profuse sweats, the dangerous whirlpool generally was escaped. The same infection was imported into England at several subsequent intervals; but happily, its greatest devastation was always of short duration; and this morbid meteor has long since disappeared from our island, and from Europe. Its symptoms were continued profuse sweats, extreme debility, fainting, anxiety, restlessness, pain in the stomach, thirst, vertigo, quick irregular pulse. Sometimes it was fatal in one day; and, if the sick survived to the seventh, they generally recovered.
Of the predisposing and occasional Causes of fevers,
intermittent and remittent, nervous and putrid, inflammatory, small-pox, measles, scarlet, plague, sweating sickness. The principal causes of the preceding genera of fevers may conveniently be presented at one view, in abbreviation. We throw to one side all that specious romance and sapient pomposity, strutting in the tinsel robes of proximate causes, and merely attend to the predisponent and occasional. Because, after diving and climbing as assiduously as many of our fellow-labourers in search of those arcana, we experienced reiterated retrogradation; and, as in metaphysicks, error supplanted by error. Neither do we attempt to pry into those latent predispositions in the human organization, which renders them susceptible to many various febrile impressions.
The predisposing and occasional causes of intermittent and remittent fevers are, cloudy winter and autumn: northern morasses: noxious miasma or emanation from morasses, from countries and soils low, damp, woody, uncultivated, especially in warm climates, weather, and seasons: atmosphere moist and hot: foggy atmosphere: unusual irregularity of the seasons and atmosphere: unusual continuance of cold rainy weather: damp night-air, especially in warm unhealthy climates: excessive heats: burning zones and regions: sudden vicissitudes from heat to cold of the seasons and weather: unusually excessive and long continued heats: also damp weather, particularly when unusually warm for the season and climate: damp ground-floors and habitations: damp sheets and beds: sleeping in the open air, and on damp ground: sudden stoppage of perspiration: bile depraved, redundant; septick miasma introduced from without, or generated within the body: efforts of nature to disencumber its functions and organs of some clogs or impurities. Perhaps rather contributing as exciting causes are passions of mind, fatigue, hardships, long watching, hunger, thirst, intoxication, venery, interruption of the excretions, &c.