Quarantine and the plague : being a summary of the report on these subjects recently addressed to the Royal Academy of Medicine in France, with introductory observations, extracts from Parliamentary correspondence, and notes / by Gavin Milroy.

  • Milroy, Gavin, 1805-1886.
Date:
1846
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Quarantine and the plague : being a summary of the report on these subjects recently addressed to the Royal Academy of Medicine in France, with introductory observations, extracts from Parliamentary correspondence, and notes / by Gavin Milroy. 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.

    51/72 (page 51)
    An infected person coming from an epidemic focus is now not more to be feared than a sporadic plague-patient, who, by the consent of all the medical men in Egypt, never occasions any risk. If it is doubtful whether the clothes and goods of infected persons can transmit the plague in the time of an epidemic, it is certain that, when once this has disappeared, such clothes and goods may be used with im- punity. An epidemic only appears in a country in the train of certain local and atmospheric influences, whose action has been prolonged for a greater or lesser period of time; very commonly too, privations, fatigues, physical or moral troubles have been experienced, in different degrees, by the in- habitants. From these united causes result more or less general predispo- sitions to contract the prevailing disease. Nowt, when a vessel carries one or more infected persons beyond the focus of infection, she cannot take along with them all the causes, past and present, which are necessary to the de- velopment of an epidemic. It must be confessed that the observations, made in Egypt during the years 1835 and 1841, seem to justify these propositions and the conclu- sions which flow from them. Let us now see whether the facts observed on board vessels at sea, and in the Lazarettos of Europe, are in accordance with these conclusions. Since the year 1720 down to the present period, 25 vessels having the plague on board, have arrived in the ports of France or Italy ; 10 at Marseilles, 5 at Venice, 8 at Leghorn, and one at Genoa. We shall con- fine our remarks to the circumstances connected with the arrivals at Mar- seilles, the official documentary evidence upon these being much more complete than in the other cases. The years in which these arrivals oc- curred in 1741, 1760, 1784, 1785, 1786 (bis), 1796, 1819, 1825, and 1837. The entire number of cases of plague (omitting all the doubtful ones), treated in the lazaretto of this port since 1720, is 32 ; and of these, 18 have proved fatal. Three of the quarantine surgeons caught the dis- ease during their attendance on the infected; they all recovered. A fourth surgeon, who had arrived on board an infected ship, and subsequently acted in his professional capacity in the lazaretto, died. Four of the health- guards, who had been (most improperly) put on board infected ships, con- tracted the disease in the lazaretto ; two died. A sailor, who acted as as- sistant in the lazaretto infirmary, was taken ill and died. Two other sailors, belonging to an infected vessel, but who seemed to have caught the disease in the lazaretto where they had been confined for more than 12 days, died. In the 11 cases therefore of plague, which might have been contracted in the lazaretto, 6 of the patients recovered, and 5 died : all the latter cases occurred in men who had been on board infected vessels. Of the three health-guards, who had caught the disease on board, only one re- covered. Indeed it would seem that, in all the fatal cases, the patients had been for a longer or shorter period of time on board infected vessels. It appears, also, that not one of the cases, which occurred on board a vessel at sea during the voyage to France, recovered ;—a circumstance that very emphatically shews the malignancy of the disease when it occurs in a crowded confined space, and the great advantages of treating it in a large open lazaretto.