A treatise on removable and mitigable causes of death, their modes of origin and means of prevention ; including a sketch of vital statistics and the leading principles of public hygiene in Europe and India. v. 1.

Norman Chevers

Date:: 1852

Credit: A treatise on removable and mitigable causes of death, their modes of origin and means of prevention ; including a sketch of vital statistics and the leading principles of public hygiene in Europe and India. v. 1. 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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$1 in 33 ; among those of four years to 1 in 22 ; among those of three years to 1 in 10\ ; among those of two years to 1 in 15^ ; and among the young soldiers, those in the first years of service, the mortality was so very high as I in 13^. The annual mortality among the veterans in the Hotel des Invalides was J in 20; among the troops in the colo- nies 1 in about 14; and among those in Algiers about 1 in 12!* The following notes, from Meeker, Blackstone, Chambers and other authorities, embody the principal regulations which have been institu- ted for the maintenance of Quarantine and other systems of Isolation. Ilecker mentions that in the latter end of the autumn of 1347, four ships full of jjlague-stricken persons returned from the Levant to Genoa, where the disease spreading with astonishing rapidity, the Genoese in the ensuing year forbad the entrance of suspected ships into their port. These sailed to Pisa and other cities on the coast, introducing the Black Death in all its direst malignancy. The same authority states that the first regular system of Isolation in Italy originated with Viscount Ber- nabo, and is dated January, 1374. Every plague patient was to be taken out of the city into the fields, there to die or recover. Those who attended upon a plague patient, where to remain apart for ten days before they again associated with any body. The priests were to examine the diseased and point out to special commissioners the per- sons infected, under punishment of the confiscation of their goods, and of being burned alive. Whoever imported the plague, the state con- demned his goods to confiscation. Finally, none except those a])point- ed for that purpose, were to attend plague patients under penalty of death and confiscation. So also when plague broke out in Italy, for the sixteenth time, in 1399, it was ordered that no stranger should be admitted from infected places, and that the city gates should be strict- ly guarded: while infected houses were to be ventilated and fumigated for at least eight or ten days, and all beddins, clothes, &c., were to be carefully purified. At the coronation of Louis XII. in 1498, when a srreat number of the nobles came to Paris to take part in the ceremony, the provost desiring to guard them from the danger of infection, pub- lished an order that all persons of both sexes suffering under certain specified maladies, should quit the capital in twenty-four hours, under the penalty of being thrown into the river ! Hecker thinks that Bills of Health were probably first introduced in 1527, during a fatal pla- gue which visited Italy for five years (1525-1530), and which called forth redoubled caution. The first Lazarettos were established upon islands at some distance from Venice. The Quarantine regulations were every year improved and increased in needful rigour, so that, from •the year 1585 onwards, no appeal was allowed from the sentence of the Council of Health ! and the other commercial nations gradually came to the support of the Venetians by adopting corresponding regulations : bills of health, however, were not general until the year 1665. It is stated that, by a Parisian ordinance of 1533, persons recovering from a contagious malady, together with their domestics, and all the mem- bers of their families, were forbidden to appear in the streets for a given period, without a white wand in their hands, to warn the public of the danger of contact. Three years later, the authorities were yet more severe against the convalescents, who were ordered to remain shut up at home for forty days after their cure; and even when the Quarantine had expired, they were not allowed to * As cited by Dr. Reid.$