Suggestions for the prevention and mitigation of epidemic and pestilential diseases, comprehending the abolition of quarantines and lazarettos : with some opportune remarks upon the danger of pestilence from scarcity intended to serve as an introduction to a work, entitled Researches in Turkey, concerning the plague, &c / by Charles Maclean.

Charles Maclean

Date:: [1817]

Credit: Suggestions for the prevention and mitigation of epidemic and pestilential diseases, comprehending the abolition of quarantines and lazarettos : with some opportune remarks upon the danger of pestilence from scarcity intended to serve as an introduction to a work, entitled Researches in Turkey, concerning the plague, &c / by Charles Maclean. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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the people to remain exposed to the influence of the atmosphere, which is the principal cause of the disease, and by restricting ac¬ cess to the means of subsistence, scarcity being its most powerful auxiliary cause, as well as in various other ways, which cannot be enumerated here. That the want of a regular and abundant supply of the means of subsistence, is a very powerful cause of plague, in the countries mentioned, shall be elsewhere shewn. It is seldom that an affluent native, at least among the Turkish population, and very rarely, indeed, that an Englishman, is affected with plague in the Levant, When, in the year 1758, a scarcity existed in England, which was considered not real, but artificial, and which did not affect other countries nearly in the same proportion as at present, it was thought necessary, by Sir Richard Manningham, a physician of London, to call the attention of the public to the dangers of an impending pestilence:—«« The plague of pestilence,’* says he, “ may be much sooner produced in this nation, by an artificial fa¬ mine, than by any infection of the plague itself from foreign parts.”1 If such apprehensions were justly entertained respecting the effects that might have arisen from a scarcity which was only arti¬ ficial, local, and temporary; how much greater ought our appre¬ hensions to be from a scarcity threatening to become real, general, and of long duration ! But whether famine arise from a real or artificial scarcity, or from a want of the means of procuring subsistence, or from a com¬ bination of these circumstances, the effect is precisely the same; the pestilence ensuing would be also of the same nature; and to augment the abundance of the articles of subsistence, or of the means of procuring them, would in all cases be the proper remedy . Hence all measures which, in giving an artificial support to par¬ ticular classes, tend to narrow the supply, or to keep up the price of the necessaries of life, must operate directly against the welfare of the great bulk of the community; and, under existing circum¬ stances, augment the already afflicting miseries of the people. Not only, therefore, should such measures be avoided, but all those means should be resorted to by which the abundance of the articles of subsistence, and of the means of procuring them, can be augmented, especially encouragement to importation, and the establishment of public granaries : the former, as the most efficient remedy against a real, the latter, against an artificial scarcity. s Vide Discourse concerning the Plague, &c. title page. In the Prefaces p. 1, he calls it, “ A most notorious artificial scarcity ,* tor ’tis known, “ he adds, “ that we have bread corn more than enough in our nation for the full supply of all the people.’*

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