The history of plague, as it has lately appeared in the islands of Malta, Gozo, Corfu, Cephalonia, &c : detailing important facts, illustrative of the specific contagion of that disease, with particulars of the means adopted for its eradication. / By J.D.Tully.

Tully, J. D. (John Dillon)

Date:: 1821

Credit: The history of plague, as it has lately appeared in the islands of Malta, Gozo, Corfu, Cephalonia, &c : detailing important facts, illustrative of the specific contagion of that disease, with particulars of the means adopted for its eradication. / By J.D.Tully. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service. The original may be consulted at London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service.

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$means of checking' its operation, and of ulti- mately exterminating- its power. It is true that fanciful theorists have some- times hazarded a contrary doctrine, but expe- rience has always proved its fallacy. During .the period that the populous city of Marseilles was visited by this disease in the year 1720, the physicians of Paris entertained an opinion, that it.was not contagious, and their deleg-ates in the infected city acted conformably to this opinion. The fatal consequences are too well known \ 60,000 people fell victims to the disorder in the short space of seven months. A similar prepossession induced the faculty in Sicily to declare the distemper which ravaged the city of Messina in 1743, not to be of a con- tagious nature ; and in the short space of three months 4-3,000 individuals were sacrificed. The theoretical doctrine of non-contagion being* in these instances so immediately refuted by the plain demonstration of facts, it cannot be expected that we should consider these cases as exceptions to the genera] belief in contagion. But amongst the numerous instances of the introduction of plague into Europe, history is no where more faithful in tracing it to contag-iou than in our own country, where the baneful effects of this disease have, from time to time, been as severely felt as in most other parts of the world. In the year lo93, when the plag-ue$