A Discourse on the Plague E-Book

Mead

• Herausgeber: Science & Technology Publishing
• Kategorie: Fachliteratur
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 141

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025

Beschreibung

A Discourse on the Plague is a comprehensive treatise written by Richard Mead, a renowned English physician, in the early 18th century. This seminal work, first published in 1720, was composed during a period of heightened fear and concern over the potential spread of the plague from continental Europe to England. Drawing upon his extensive medical knowledge and experience, Mead offers a detailed examination of the nature, causes, and symptoms of the plague, as well as practical advice for its prevention and management. The book begins with a historical overview of the plague, tracing its devastating impact across various regions and epochs. Mead meticulously discusses the transmission of the disease, emphasizing the importance of contagion and the role of infected individuals, goods, and environments in spreading the infection. He advocates for strict quarantine measures, the isolation of the sick, and the regulation of trade and travel as essential strategies to contain outbreaks. Mead also delves into the medical aspects of the plague, describing its clinical manifestations, progression, and the challenges of diagnosis. He reviews contemporary treatments and remedies, evaluating their efficacy and offering recommendations based on observation and reason. Throughout the discourse, Mead stresses the significance of public health interventions, the responsibilities of authorities, and the need for vigilance and preparedness. Written in clear and accessible language, A Discourse on the Plague reflects the scientific rigor and humanitarian concern of its author. It stands as both a historical document and a practical guide, providing valuable insights into the medical and social responses to one of history’s most feared diseases. The book remains a testament to the enduring quest for knowledge and the protection of public health in the face of epidemic threats.

Leseprobe

A

DISCOURSE

ON THE

PLAGUE:

BY

RICHARD MEAD,

Fellow of the College of Physicians, and of the Royal Society; and Physician to his Majesty.

The Ninth Edition corrected and enlarged.

LONDON,

Printed for A. Millar, against Catharine-Street, in the Strand: And J. Brindley in New-Bond-Street. MDCCXLIV.

TO THERight HonourableJames Craggs, Esq; ONE OF His Majesty’s Principal Secretaries of State.

SIR,

I Most humbly offer to You my Thoughts concerning the Prevention of the Plague, which I have put together by your Command. As soon as you were pleased to signify to me, in his Majesty’s Absence, that their Excellencies the Lords Justices thought it necessary for the publick Safety, upon the Account of the Sickness now in France, that proper Directions should be drawn up to defend our selves from such a Calamity; I most readily undertook the Task, though upon short Warning, and with little Leisure: I have therefore rather put down the principal Heads of Caution, than a Set of Directions in Form.

Thefirst, which relate to the performing Quarantaines, &c. You, who are perfectly versed in the History of Europe, will see are agreeable to what is practised in other Countries, with some new Regulations. The next, concerning the suppressing Infection here, are very different from the Methods taken in former Times among Us, and from what they commonly do Abroad: But, I persuade my self, will be found agreeable to Reason.

I most heartily wish, that the wise Measures, the Government has already taken, and will continue to take, with Regard to the former of these, may make the Rules about the latter unnecessary. However, it is fit, we should be always provided with proper Means of Defence against so terrible an Enemy.

May this short Essay be received as one Instance, among many others, of the Care, you always shew for Your Country; and as a Testimony of the great Esteem and Respect, with which I have the Honour to be,

SIR,Your most obedient, andMost humble Servant,R. Mead. Nov. 25. 1720.

THE CONTENTS.

The Preface

,

Page i

PART I.

Of the

Plague

in General

.

Chap I.

Of the Origine and Nature of the

Plague

,

1

Chap II.

Of the Causes which spread the

Plague

,

41

PART II.

Of the Methods to be taken against the

Plague

.

Chap I.

Of preventing Infection from other Countries,

80

Chap II.

Of stopping the Progress of the

Plague

, if it should enter our Country,

100

Chap III.

Of the Cure of the

Plague

,

151

THE PREFACE.

ThisBook having at first been written only as a Plan of Directions for preserving our Country from the Plague[1]was then very short and concise. An Act of Parliament being immediately after made for performing Quarantaines &c. according to the Rules here laid down, it passed through seven Editions in one year without any Alterations. I then thought proper to make some Additions to it, in order to shew the Reasonableness of the Methods prescribed, by giving a more full Description of this Disease, and collecting some Examples of the good Success which had attended such Measures, when they had been put in Practice. At the same time I annex’d a short Chapter relating to the Cure of the Plague; being induced thereto by considering how widely most Authors have erred in prescribing a Heap of useless and very often hurtful Medicines, which they recommend under the specious Titles of Antidotes, Specifics and Alexipharmacs: hoping that the great Resemblance, which I had observed between this Disease and the Small Pox, would justify my writing upon a Distemper which I have never seen.

INDEED the Small Pox is a true Plague, tho’ of a particular kind, bred, as I have shewn all Pestilences are, in the same hot Egyptian Climate, and brought into Asia and Europe by the way of Commerce; but most remarkably by the War with the Saracens, called the Holy War, at the latter end of the eleventh and the beginning of the twelfth Century[2]. Ever since which time the morbific Seeds of it have been preserved in the infected Cloaths and the Furniture of Houses: and have broken out more or less in all Countries, according as the hot and moist Temperature of the Air has favoured their Spreading and the Exertion of their Force. The Measles is likewise a Plague sui generis, and owes its Origin to the same Country.

I have now revised my little Work once more: and though I cannot find any reason to change my Mind as to any material Points which regard either the Preventing or the Stopping the Progress of Infection; yet I have here and there added some new Strokes of Reasoning, and, as the Painters say, retouch’d the Ornaments, and hightened the Colouring of the Piece.

THE Substance of the long Preface to the last Edition is as follows.

I have insisted more at large upon the Infection of this Disease, than I could ever have thought needful at this time, after Europe has had Experience of the Distemper for so many Ages; had I not been surprized by the late Attempts of some Physicians in France to prove the contrary, even while they have the most undeniable Arguments against them before their Eyes. In particular, I cannot but very much admire to see Dr. Chicoyneau, and the other Physicians, who first gave us Observations on the Plague, when at Marseilles, relate in the Reflections, they afterwards published upon those Observations, the Case of a Man, who was seized with the Plague, upon his burying a young Woman dead of it, when no one else dared to approach the Body; and yet to see them ascribe his Disease, not to his being infected by the Woman, but solely to his Grief for the Loss of her, to whom he had made Love, and to a Diarrhœa, which had been some time upon him[3]. No question but these concurred to make his Disease the more violent; and perhaps even exposed him to contract the Infection: but why it should be supposed, that he was not infected, I cannot imagine, when there was so plain an Appearance of it. I am as much at a Loss to find any Colour of Reason for their denying Infection in another Case, they relate, of a young Lady seized with the Plague, upon the sudden Sight of aPestilential Tumor, just broke out upon her Maid; not allowing any thing but the Lady’s Surprize to be the Cause of her Illness[4].

THE Truth is, these Physicians had engaged themselves in an Hypothesis, that the Plague was bred at Marseilles by a long Use of bad Aliment, and grew so fond of their Opinion, as not to be moved by the most convincing Evidence. And thus it mostly happens, when we indulge Conjectures instead of pursuing the true Course for making Discoveries in Nature.

I KNOW they imagine this their Sentiment to be abundantly confirmed from some Experiments made by Dr. Deidier[5]upon the Bile taken from Persons dead of the Plague: which having been either poured into a Wound made on purpose in different Dogs, or injected into their Veins, never failed, in many Trials, to produce in them all the Symptoms of the Pestilence, even the external ones of Bubo’s and Carbuncles. One Dog, upon which the Experiment succeeded, had been known, for three Months before, to devour greedily the corrupted Flesh of infected Persons, and Pledgets taken off from Pestilential Ulcers, without receiving any Injury. From hence they conclude[6] that this Disease is not communicated by Contagion, but originally bred in the Body by the Corruption of the Bile. This Corruption, they say, is the Effect of unwholsome Food; and theBile thus corrupted produces a Thickness and a Degree of Coagulation in the Blood, which is the Cause of the Plague: Tho’ this they allow to be inforced by a bad Season of the Year, and the Terrors of Mind and Despair of the Inhabitants.

THESE Experiments are indeed curious, but fall very short of what they are brought to prove. The most that can be gathered from them is this: That Dogs do not, at least not so readily, receive Pestilential Infection from Men, as Men do from one another: And also, that the Bile is so highly corrupted in a Body infected with the Plague, that by putting it into the Blood of a Dog it will immediately breed the same Disease.

BUT it does not follow from hence, that the Bile is the Seat of the Disease, or that other Humors of the Body are not corrupted as well as this. I make no question but the whole Mass of Blood is, in this Case, in a State of Putrefaction; and consequently that all the Liquors derived from it partake of the Taint.

ACCORDINGLY it appeared afterwards from some Experiments made by Dr. Couzier[7], that not only the Blood, but even the Urine from an infected person, infused into the crural Vein of a Dog communicated the Plague. I will venture to affirm, that if, instead of Bile, Blood, or Urine, the Matter of the Ulcers had been put into a Wound made in the Dog; it would have had at least an equally pernicious Effect: As may well be concluded from the Inoculation of the Small Pox.

AS to the Dog’s eating the corrupted Flesh and purulent Matter of the Patients; it ought to have been considered that there are some Poisons very powerful when mixed immediately with the Blood, which will not operate in the Stomach at all: As in particular the Saliva of the mad Dog and the Venom of the Viper[8]. And therefore Dr. Deidier himself, some Months after his former Experiments, found that pestiferous Bile itself was swallowed by Dogs without any Harm[9].

THE right Inference to be made from these Experiments, I think, would have been this: That since the Blood and all the Humors are so greatly corrupted in the Plague, as that Dogs (tho’ not so liable to catch the Distemper in the ordinary way of Infection, as Men are) may receive it by a small Quantity of any of these from a diseased Subject being mixed with their Blood; it may well be supposed, that the Effluvia from an infected Person, drawn into the Body of one who is sound, may be pestiferous and productive of the like Disorder.

MY Assertion, that these French Physicians have before them the fullest Proofs of this Infection, not only appears from these Instances of it, I have observed to be recorded by themselves; but likewise from what Dr. le Moine and Dr. Bailly[10]have written, of the Manner in which the Plague was brought to Canourgue in the Gevaudan: as also from an amazing Instance they give us of the great Subtilty of this Poison, experienced at Marvejols: where no less than sixty Persons were at once infected in a Church, by one that came thither out of an infected House. The Plague was carried from Marseilles to Canourgue, as follows. A Gally-Slave, employed in burying the Dead at Marseilles, escaped from thence to the Village of St. Laurent de Rivedolt, a League distant from Correjac: where finding a Kinsman, who belonged to the latter Place, he presented him with a Waistcoat and a pair of Stockings he had brought along with him. The Kinsman returns to his Village, and dies in two or three Days; being followed soon after by three Children and their Mother. His Son, who lived at Canourgue, went from thence, in order to bury the Family; and, at his Return, gave to his Brother-in-law a Cloak he had brought with him: the Brother-in-law laying it upon his Bed, lost a little Child which lay with him, in one Day’s Time; and two Days after, his Wife; himself following in seven or eight. The Parents of this unhappy Family, taking Possession of the Goods of the Deceased, underwent the same Fate.

ALL this abundantly shews how inexcusable the foresaid Physicians in France are, in their opposing the common Opinion that the Plague is contagious. However, I have paid so much Regard to them, as to insist the more largely upon the Proof of that Contagion; lest the Opinion of those, who have had so much Experience of the Disease, might lead any one into an Error, in an Affair of such Consequence, that all my Precepts relating to Quarantaines, and well nigh every particular Part of my Advice, depends upon it: For if this Opinion were a Mistake, Quarantaines, and all the like Means of Defence, ought to be thrown aside as of no use. But as I continue persuaded, that we have the greatest Evidence, that thePlagueis a contagious Disease; so I have left, without any Alteration, all my Directions in respect to Quarantaines: in which, I hope, I have not recommended any Thing prejudicial to Trade; my Advice being very little different from what has been long practised in all the trading Ports of Italy, and in other Places. Nay, were we to be more remiss in this than our Neighbours, I cannot think but the Fear they would have of us, must much obstruct our Commerce.

BUT I shall pursue this Point no farther: the rather because a very learned Physician among themselves has since, both by strong Reasoning and undeniable Instances, evinced the Reality of Contagion[11].

IN a word, the more I consider this Matter, the more I am convinced that the Precepts I have delivered, both with regard to the Preventing the Plague from coming into a Country, and the Treatment of it when present, are perfectly suitable to the Nature of the Distemper, and consequently the fittest to be complied with. But how far, in every Situation of Affairs, it is expedient to grant the Powers, requisite for putting all of them in Practice, it is not my proper Business, as a Physician, to determine. No doubt, but at all Times, these Powers ought to be so limited and restrained, that they may never endanger the Rights and Liberties of a People. Indeed, as I have had no other View than the Publick Good in this my Undertaking, and the Satisfaction of doing somewhat towards the Relief of Mankind, under the greatest of Calamities; so I should not, without the utmost Concern, see that any Thing of mine gave the least Countenance to Cruelty and Oppression.

BUT I must confess, I find no Reason for any Apprehensions of this kind, from any thing I have advanced. For what extraordinary Danger can there be, in lodging Powers for the proper Management of People under the Plague, with a Council of Health, or other Magistrates, who shall be accountable, like all other Civil Officers, for their just Behaviour in the Execution of them? Though this I must leave to those, who are better skilled in the Nature of Government. But sure I am, that by the Rules here given, both the Sick will be provided for with more Humanity, and the Country more effectually defended against the Progress of the Disease, than by any of the Methods heretofore generally put in Practice, either in our own, or in other Nations.

THE Usage among Us, established by Act of Parliament, of Imprisoning in their Houses every Family the Plague seizes on, without allowing any one to pass in or out, but such as are appointed by Authority, to perform the necessary Offices about the Sick, is certainly the severest Treatment imaginable; as it exposes the whole Family to suffer by the same Disease; and consequently is little less than assigning them over to the cruellest of Deaths: As I have shewn in the Discourse.

THE Methods practised in France are likewise obnoxious to great Objections. Crowding the Sick together in Hospitals can serve to no good Purpose; but instead thereof will promote and spread the Contagion, and besides will expose the Sick to the greatest Hardships. It is no small Part of the Misery, that attends this terrible Enemy of Mankind, that whereas moderate Calamities open the Hearts of Men to Compassion and Tenderness, this greatest of Evils is found to have the contrary Effect. Whether Men of wicked Minds, through Hopes of Impunity, at these Times of Disorder and Confusion, give their evil Disposition full Scope, which ordinarily is restrained by the Fear of Punishment; or whether it be, that a constant View of Calamities and Distress does so pervert the Minds of Men, as to blot out all Sentiments of Humanity; or whatever else be the Cause: certain it is, that at such Times, when it should be expected to see all Men unite in one common Endeavour, to moderate the publick Misery; quite otherwise, they grow regardless of each other, and Barbarities are often practised, unknown at other Times. Accordingly Diemerbroek informs us, that he himself had often seen these Hospitals