A treatise on the plague : more especially on the police management of that disease : illustrated by the plan of operations successfully carried into effect in the late plague of Corfu : with hints on quarantine / by A. White.

  • White, Andrew
Date:
1846
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A treatise on the plague : more especially on the police management of that disease : illustrated by the plan of operations successfully carried into effect in the late plague of Corfu : with hints on quarantine / by A. White. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

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    for the sake of example. Hanging and shooting tend only to exasperate the people, and seldom prevent the commission of this crime. More will be done by mild measures, and ex- plaining to the people the reasons and necessity of acting as we do; and by endeavouring to persuade them that we are not at all actuated by cruelty or malevolence towards them, but from a regard, not only to the public safety, but also to their own personal security and advantage. There are many ways of punishing, without having recourse to such extreme mea- sures. Still the people must be made perfectly to understand that whilst under quarantine restriction, which in its nature approaches to martial law, they cannot with impunity violate such restriction, nor make light of so sacred a law, but that the community at large, as well as they themselves in particular, are immediately concerned in its strict observance. That mild and conciliating measures will have the happiest effects, I can vouch from experience ; for, during the whole time of my resi- dence in Lefchimo, among a people no ways remarkable for tameness and obedience to orders, only one man lost his life for his refractory conduct. But this was a most hardened and unprincipled villain, who had been guilty of the greatest excesses, as will be seen in the narrative. In the time of plague, as well as in the time of warfare, it must be expected that much valuable property will be destroyed, and some of it, perhaps, in a wanton and unnecessary manner, which it is not always in our power to prevent. This destruction of property of a susceptible nature, or such as is capable of retaining and propagating the plague, is owing to the impos- sibility of ascertaining with precision the things which contain the fomes of the disease, and of separating them from those which do not. On this head, much, therefore, rests entirely on suspicion, and perhaps but a small portion on positive certainty. Thus, in an impested house, the clothes immediately about the sick, and many of the things in their chambers, are no doubt positively imbued with the matter ol plague, and respecting
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