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of Government. Of this I witnessed the following instance. In a district called the Manderaggio, inhabited only by the very lowest order of the people, the streets were so exceedingly narrow, and the houses contained so many families, that when the plague was once introduced, it became impossible to effect a separation of the sick from the uninfected, as in other districts. It was therefore deemed advisable to form an encampment in an airy situation by the sea, to which the inhabitants of the Manderaggio might be removed, while their houses, especially those where the plague had prevailed, should be thoroughly purified and ventilated. When their removal was proposed, they unanimously protested against it, declaring that nothing but absolute force should induce them to quit their houses. A friar of a neighbouring convent, on being apprised of this, came forward and harangued them on the folly of their conduct. He conjured them, as they valued their own lives, and those of their wives and children, to accede voluntarily to a measure which could have no other object than their safety, and the public good, inasmuch as it would be attended with considerable expence, and inconvenience, to the Government. And, above all, he represented their compliance as a duty which, as good Catholics, they were bound to perform. His arguments proved effectual; and the good man witnessed the quiet and orderly evacuation of the district, while he had the satisfaction to reflect that he was instrumental in preserving the lives of so many hundreds of his fellow-creatures. The ceremony of conveying the sacrament, or viaticum, to the dying in Roman Catholic countries, is always impressive. The tinkling of the bell which announces the approach of the host; the plaintive chanting of the priest and his attendants; and the prostration of those who happen to be in the street, unite in giving a great degree of solemnity to the scene. But now the constant recurrence of this ceremony occasioned the most painful reflections, as it denoted the increasing ravages of the plague. So much, indeed, were weak and nervous per sons affected, that it was judged expedient to discontinue the usual formalities, and to have the viaticum privately conveyed by the priest, accom

panied by one or two attendants only. I have frequently seen the last offices of religion administered in the open street; for as soon as any one was seized with symptoms which indicated that he was infected, the priest was instantly sent for; and the patient having made his confession, and received absolution, the communion, and extreme unction, seemed quite resigned to his fate. At the commencement of the plague, several of the priests who were thus employed, died in consequence of their culpable neglect of the means of selfpreservation. After the first month or two, however, when the good effects of caution were seen, and appreciated, those pious offices were performed without much risk. I particularly remember a young Dominican friar, who was indefatigable in his attendance on the sick; and having had frequent access to witness his mode of proceeding on such occasions, I could not but admire his prudence, while I applauded his zeal. He approached just near enough to the sick person to hear his confession; he then conveyed to him the consecrated wafer by means of a silver rod; and extreme unction was administered with equal caution, by dipping cotton in the consecrated oil, and fixing it in a silver tube, care being taken, at the conclusion of the ceremony, to burn the cotton.

When I add that this exemplary person, and others animated by the same zeal, although they continued their pious labours until the final extinction of the plague, totally escaped the contagion, may it not be inferred that the disease is, generally speaking, to be communicated only by actual contact with an infected body? I do not mean to say, that, in the confined dwellings of the poor, and other airless situations, the atmosphere may not become so highly impregnated with the pestiferous ef fluvia, as to render it dangerous even to enter the infected chamber; but whenever a thorough ventilation can be obtained, and immediate contact with the person, and the clothes of the sick person is avoided, he may be approached, I conceive, with perfect safety.

To enter into minute details, respecting the symptoms of this dreadful malady, would lead me too far. Besides, these vary so much at differ

ent periods of the disease, that it were presumption in any one but a professional man to attempt to describe them with any degree of accuracy. I may, however, observe generally, that some of the most frequent symptoms indicative of plague were debility, a sensation of stupor, and a total inability to walk without staggering. Sometimes the patient exhibited a most singular expression of the eyes, which it were difficult to describe. It combined muddiness with lustre, as Russell observes; or, perhaps, you may form a inore accurate idea of what I wish to convey from the following description of a French writer on the plague. "Les yeux etoient ternis, le regard fixe et egaré annonçoit la terreur et le desespoir." The effect of such a combination was, as you may believe, very terrible. This symptom, I understand, was considered unfavourable; and I believe it was less frequent in the more advanced periods of the plague when the disease seemed to have assumed a milder form. Fever almost invariably attended the disease at some stage or other; but the concomitant symptoms were very different. Glandular swellings very generally appear ed; and if these were brought to suppurate, the patient, I believe, commonly recovered. In some subjects carbuncles appeared, under various forms, and in different parts of the body, but chiefly about the legs and arms. Petechia were by no means an uncommon eruption. Of these there are several species; but those I had occasion to see resembled innumerable flea bites. They appeared chiefly on the back or breast, and gradually assuming a deeper tinge, became, before death, quite of alivid hue. Headach, giddiness, vomiting, and diarrhoea, were all symptoms of common occurrence; and delirium, though it appeared at different stages of the disease, was most frequently observed towards the death of the patient. I was myself particularly struck by the anxious look, and the taciturnity of those whom I had occasion to see. They seemed indifferent to their situation, and shewed a callous insensibility about the fate of those around

them.

Of the mode of treatment I shall not pretend to speak; but I believe that mercury, in different forms, was

very generally administered; as also in cases where great debility prevailed, wine, bark, and other tonics and stimulants. Oil frictions might, perhaps, be useful in promoting the suppuration of swellings, or encouraging perspiration; but I do not find that the application of oil was otherwise found efficacious as a remedy. As a preventive, however, its virtues cannot be too highly appreciated. I have myself known many persons who, without using any other precaution, than that of occasionally anointing their skin with olive oil, attended with impunity the sick beds of plague patients. It was usual, too, for medical men and others, who had occasion to approach the sick, to apply a sponge moistened with strong vinegar to the mouth and nostrils, and to avoid inhaling the breath of the patient. Fumigations of nitric, or muriatic acid, were generally used in the apartments of the sick; and those who were necessarily exposed to infection, had their clothes frequently purified by such fumigations. But nothing, I believe, is more efficacious as a preventive of contagion than a scrupulous attention to personal cleanliness. I cannot pretend to say what proportion of those who caught the infection recovered; but the disease was certainly of a more virulent nature, and more fatal at the commencement than it afterwards became. Great hopes were at first entertained that the malady would have yielded to the excessive heat of a Maltese summer; but, contrary to general experience, the mortality was greatest in the month of July. In August the number of deaths was considerably diminished; and during September and October the disease was rapidly in the decline. Towards the end of January 1814, the plague entirely ceased throughout the island, with the exception of Casal Curmi, a low, unhealthy village, situated at no great distance from the Campo Santo or burial ground, a circumstance which might, in some degree, perhaps, account for that district retaining the infection for some months after its extinction in every other part of the island. Under these circumstances, the governor adopted the following expedient: He issued a proclamation, by which Casal Curmi was declared to be a Lazaretto; and as

such it was surrounded by a cordon of troops, and put under martial law. This measure, by which all intercourse with the Casal was cut off, was followed by the gradual re-establishment of free communication throughout all parts of the island; and before the end of the year, entire confidence was happily restored, and every thing reverted to that state, the suspension of which is almost as much to be deprecated as the malady itself. Early in the spring of 1814 the plague had entirely ceased, even in the illfated Casal Curmi; but to our utter dismay, an express arrived about the beginning of March from the island of Gozo, which had hitherto remained entirely free from infection, announcing that a person had recently died there whose case had excited great alarm. This was followed by a succession of cases, which plainly shewed that the alarm was but too well founded; and no time was lost by the government in adopting the most efficacious measures. The district where the plague had appeared was surrounded, like Casal Curmi, by a cordon of troops, and two months had not elapsed before the contagion was entirely suppressed. There was something so extraordinary in the circumstances attending the introduction of the plague into Gozo, that although I have trespassed so long on your patience, I cannot but advert to them. The person by whom it appeared to have been conveyed, had recently performed a double quarantine of forty days at Malta, in consequence of his wife having died of plague. On his release from the Lazaretto he had readily obtained leave to proceed to Gozo; and having, on his arrival there, given out some clothes to be washed, they were no sooner handled by the laundress than she was seized with pestilential symptoms, and died. The man himself was soon after taken ill, and on his death-bed acknowledged that, previously to his embarking for Gozo, he had solicited leave to visit his own house, which had undergone a thorough purification; but he confessed, that, notwithstanding his having been attended by a health of fice guardian, he had privately dug up some wearing apparel of his deceased wife, which, during her illness, he had concealed in the garden, under the apprehension that it would

be burned. These articles he had taken with him to Gozo, and they formed a part of those which he had given out to be washed. Thus, it ap pears, that the pestilential miasmata must have remained in the clothes for at least three months, and how much longer they might have continued while the clothes were excluded from the air, is matter of great uncertainty. A year had now elapsed from the first appearance of the plague at Malta until its final extinction in the island of Gozo; and when I state, that, during that period, the total amount of persons who died under the malady was considerably under 5000, out of a population exceeding 100,000, may it not be fairly inferred, that much was, under Providence, effected by the various means so anxiously and unremittingly applied towards mitigating the virulence, and arresting the progress of the disease? So much, indeed, may be effected, as I conceive, by a well regulated police, that, were the plague unfortunately to be again introduced into Malta, I have no doubt that it would be instantly suppressed, as the people, taught by sad experience, would readily submit to coercive meacures, which, on the first suspicion of infection, cannot be too promptly arranged, or too rigidly enforced.

I might easily extend my narrative by dwelling on the heart-rending scenes which were constantly occurring during this afflicting period; but having already detained you too long, I will confine myself to one or two of those which came under my own observation, and which are connected with some traits of generosity not unworthy of being recorded.

In passing one day along the street, I remarked that something must have recently occurred to have excited a more than ordinary degree of interest. The women especially appeared to be much affected; and on inquiring the cause, I was informed, that the Beccamorti having entered an infected house in the neighbourhood_to_remove the body of a man who had recently died, had discovered that the only surviving member of the family was an infant whom they found at the breast of the mother, who had just expired. It was not long before a Maltese woman came forward to receive the child, at the imminent risk of

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I am now about to relate an anecdote of a person, whose conduct was the more meritorious, as his habits were rather calculated to harden him against the kindlier feelings of his nature. Amongst the persons employed, at the commencement of the plague, was a poor old Armenian, who happened to be at Malta, and who, having lived amidst contagion all his life, was easily induced to hire himself as one of the Beccamorti. In the course of his melancholy duties he found in one of the infected houses a child from three to four years old, the only one of the family who survived. As it appeared that the child had no relation who took any interest in him, the old man persuaded the boy to accompany him, and he soon became affectionately attached to his protector. Nothing could exceed the care with which the good man nourished his little ward, or the tenderness with which he watched over his safety. Nor did his generosity go unrewarded; for the government being apprised of his conduct, immediately

gave him an increased allowance.

I have seen a girl from four to five years old, the eldest of three orphans, watching the arrival of the provision cart to obtain the daily supply for her little family. I have seen the dead cart stop day after day at the same house, until a numerous family was conveyed to the grave, save one unhappy parent, who bewailed his exemption from the common fate.-I have seen many a widow return from the Lazaretto to the empty walls of her desolate dwelling, now bereft of every thing by which it was so lately

endeared to her. I have seen,-but I leave to your own imagination the completion of a picture of which I have given you only the outlines; and if you take a inelancholy pleasure in contemplating the horrors of the plague, I would refer you to Boccacio, to Defoe, and to Wilson, by whom they have been so pathetically described. Believe me, my Dear Friend, ever and most cordially yours,

E. S. G.

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prefaced by a Memoir of Dr Wells, THIS highly respectable volume is written by himself, which, like all his productions, is extremely simple and inodest. He was born, in 1757, of Scottish parents at Charlestown, in South Carolina, whence he was sent to the taught with great success by Dr Chapgrammar school of Dumfries, then Education. He went in due time to man, author of a very sensible book on the University of Edinburgh, where he formed an acquaintance with Mr Miller, now Lord Glenlee, and the present Mr David Hume, whom he reckons amongst his most cordial friends through life. He says his manners but he was strongly impelled to act were from infancy rude and rough, times with imprudence. On again vialways agreeably to truth, though somesiting Europe, after having been some years in America, he, on one occasion, provoked the colonel of a Scotch regiment serving in Holland, in which he ranked as assistant-surgeon, so far as to be punished with two days confinement. Wells, on being released, threw

up

his commission, and attacked the colonel in the public street, daring him to single combat. The affair was

wick, who adjudged Wells to several brought before the Duke of Brunsyears confinement in a remote prison, but the Duke revoked this severe sen

tence when he learned our author's previous resignation.

He took his medical degree at Edinburgh immediately after this adventure, and returned a second time to America, which his father had, in the mean time, been forced to leave in consequence of his loyalty; and he gives several very interesting details of the conduct of the two parties during the heat of the revoluInto these details we cannot afford room to follow him; tionary war. but as a specimen of his style of narration, we give, in his own words, an

* Two Essays; one upon Single Vision with Two Eyes; the other on Dew. A Lord Kenyon, and an Account of a Female Letter to the Right Honourable Lloyd of the White Race of Mankind, part of whose Skin resembles that of a Negro, &c. By the late William Charles Wells, M. D. &c. with a Memoir of his Life, written by himself. London, 1818.

R

VOL. V.

account of his escape from a shipwreck. He was sailing from Charlestown to St Augustine in Fast Florida.

"The master of the vessel was king's pilot for the harbour. This probably made him fool-hardy; for in weather a little windy, but not stormy, he ran his vessel aground upon breakers, which had previously occasioned the loss of many vessels. She immediately bulged and lost her masts, and it was expected that her deck would separate from her ribs, and be carried out to sea, as the tide was now falling. The wind, however, became moderate, and the accident which we dreaded did not happen. With some others of the passengers I had stripped myself completely naked, and lashed myself to the capstan, in order that I might have something firm to abide by, and not be washed away by the waves. Some hours after this, the tide having begun to turn, and set in towards the harbour, and the evening becoming dusky, it was determined by those who could swim to make their way through the breakers, as we saw boats waiting for us in smooth water at their edge. Commissioner Wyllie preceded me, and when taken up, told an intimate friend of mine, who had come down in his boat to assist me, that I should certainly be drowned, as I was unable to swim. Shortly after he had left the wreck, I determined upon making the same experiment myself, and, with the assistance of a stout sailor, got through the breakers, sometimes swimming and sometimes wading. The weather having become still more moderate in the night, those who were left upon the wreck were easily saved next morning; but in the course of a few hours after, the vessel went entirely to pieces." p. xxviii. He settled as a physician in London about 1784, but was so little acquainted with the methods of bringing himself into notice, that he was several years without taking a single fee.

At last, by perseverance, he succeeded in obtaining a respectable, though by no means a lucrative practice. In 1812 he began to make some experiments, which he had long meditated, on dew. As these experiments, had to be conducted in the night, the prosecution of them affected his health so much, that, had he not had a spirit of uncommon perseverance, he must have abandoned the attempt. This spirit, however, carried him through every difficulty, and in 1814 he published the results in a very modest and philosophical essay, republished in this volume, which attracted the notice of the public in an unusual degree.

This interesting memoir is concluded by several anecdotes and circumstances, very characteristic, which he had not, in consequence of sickness, found time to incorporate in their order in his connected narrative. Some of these are very amusing; for example,

"When I was a boy at Dumfries School, I used to wander on foot during the autumnal holidays through the country, without any fixed object. In one of these rovings, being then in the twelfth year of my age, I went to call upon a friend of my father's, without any other clothes than those which I had upon me. The following morning I thought my shirt looked dirty, and therefore determined to wash it myself. I chose, as a place fit for this purpose, a little meadow on the side of the river (rivulet) Milk, which was sheltered by a high bank behind me. Having done the business in the best manner I could, without any assistance from soap, I placed my shirt upon the grass for the purpose of drying it, and laid myself, in the meantime, in the sunshine, upon another piece of dry grass in the neighbourhood. When my shirt was dry, I put it on, and return ed to my friends. In the course of the night, I was seized with a considerable degree of fever; and in the morning my face, and part of my body, which had been exposed to the sun, became considerably red and swollen." lvii.

p.

Dr Wells, from a very early period of his illness, which terminated in hydrothorax, looked forward to a fatal crisis of it, and employed himself in arranging his affairs with the utmost self-possession and diligence, until he had settled, with great exactness, every thing which he thought important. From the 8th of August, his physicians, (Drs Baillie and Lister,) as well as himself, abandoned all hopes of his recovery. He died in the evening of the 18th September 1817. seized with a slight fit of apoplexy, So early as 1800 he had been suddenly and he gives us a striking account of the state in which that attack left him.

"I did not recover so far (he says) as to be enabled to return to the exercise of my profession for several months, and I session of my memory. never afterwards regained the complete posI became, too, much more unfit for the pursuit of any. difficult train of thought, which was the production of another person. I did not, however, as well as I could ascertain, become less equal than I had been for the

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