THE

WORK S

O F

Dr RICHARD MEAD.

A DISCOURSE on the PLAGUE.

To the RIGHT HONOURABLE

JAMES CRAGGS, Efq;

One of his Majefty's Principal Secretaries of State.

I

SIR,

Most humbly offer to you my thoughts concerning the prevention of the plague, which I have put together by your command. As foon as you were pleased to fignify to me, in his Majefty's abfence, that their Excellencies the Lords Juftices thought it neceffary for the public fafety, upon the account of the fickness now in France, that proper directions fhould be drawn up to defend ourselves VOL. II.

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from

from fuch a calamity; I most readily undertook the tafk, though upon fhort warning, and with little leifure I have therefore rather put down the principal heads of caution, than a fet of directions in form.

The firft, which relate to the performing quarantines, &c. you, who are perfectly verfed in the hiftory of Europe, will fee are agreeable to what is practifed in other countries, with fome new regulations. The next, concerning the fuppreffing infection here, are very different from the methods taken in former times among us, and from what they commonly do abroad; but, I perfuade myself, will be. found agreeable to reason.

I moft heartily wifh, that the wife measures the government has already taken, and will continue to take, with regard to the former of thefe, may make the rules about the latter unneceffary. However, it is fit, we fhould be always provided with proper means of defence againft fo terrible an enemy.

May this fhort effay be received as one instance, among many others, of the care you always fhew for your country; and as a teftimony of the great esteem and respect, with which I have the honour to be,

T

His book having at first been written only as a plan of directions for preferving our country from the plague, was then very fhort and concife. An act of parliament being immediately after made for performing quarantines, &c. according to the rules here laid down, it paffed through feven editions in one year without any alterations. I then thought

proper to make fome additions to it, in order to fhew the reasonableness of the methods prescribed, by giving a more full description of this difeafe, and collecting fome examples of the good fuccefs which had attended fuch measures, when they had been put in practice. At the fame time I annexed á fhort chapter relating to the cure of the plague; being induced thereto by confidering how widely most authors have erred in prefcribing a heap of ufelefs and very often hurtful medicines, which they recommend under the fpecious titles of antidotes, fpecifics, and alexipharmacs hoping that the great refemblance which I had obferved between this difeafe and the fmall pox, would justify my writing upon a diftemper which I have never feen.

Indeed the fmall-pox is a true plague, though of a particular kind, bred, as I have fhewn all peftilences are, in the fame hot Egyptian climate, and brought into Afia 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. Ever fince which time the morbific feeds * See the dedication. + Vid. Huet. de rebus ad eum pertinentib^, pag. 23.

of it have been preferved in the infected cloaths and the furniture of houfes; and have broken out more or lefs in all countries, according as the hot and moist temperature of the air has favoured their fpreading and the exertion of their force. The measles is likewife a plague fui generis, and owes its origin to the fame country.

I have now revised my little work once more: and though I cannot find any reafon to change my mind as to any material points which regard either the preventing or the ftopping the progrefs of infection; yet I have here and there added fome new ftrokes of reafoning, and, as the painters fay, retouched the ornaments, and heightened the colouring of the piece.

The fubftance of the long preface to the last edition is as follows.

I have infifted 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 diftemper for fo many ages: had 1 not been furprised 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 fee Dr Chicoyneau, and the other physicians, who first gave us obfervations on the plague, when at Marseilles, relate, in the reflections they afterwards published upon thofe obfervations, the cafe of a man who was feized with the plague, upon his burying a young woman dead of it, when no one elfe dared to approach the body; and yet to fee them afcribe his disease, not to his being infected by the woman, but folely to his grief for the lofs of her, to whom he

had

had made love, and to a diarrhoea which had been fome time upon him *. No queftion but thefe con. curred to make his disease the more violent; and perhaps even expofed him to contract the infection: but why fhould it be fuppofed, that he was not infected, I cannot imagine, when there was fo plain an appearance of it. I am as much at a lofs to find any colour of reafon for their denying infection in another cafe they relate, of a young lady feized with the plague, upon the fudden fight of a peftilential tumour, just broke out upon her maid; not allowing any thing but the lady's furprife to be the caufe of her illness +.

The truth is, thefe physicians had engaged themfelves in an hypothefis, that the plague was bred at Marseilles by a long ufe of bad aliment, and grew fo fond of their opinion, as not to be moved by the moft convincing evidence. And thus it mostly happens, when we indulge conjectures instead of purfuing the true course for making discoveries in nature.

I know they imagine this their fentiment to be abundantly confirmed from fome experiments made by Dr Deidier upon the bile taken from perfons dead of the plague which having been either poured into a wound made on purpofe in different dogs, or injected into their veins, never failed, in many trials, to produce in them all the fymptoms of the peftilence, even the external ones of bubo's and carbuncles. One dog, upon which the experiment fucceeded, had been known, for three months before, to devour greedily the corrupted flesh of infected persons, and pledgets * Obfervations fur la pefte de Marfeille, p. 38. 39. 40. lbid. p. 113. Vid. Philof. Tranf. N° 370.

taken