Page:Philosophical Transactions - Volume 054.pdf/107

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.

[ 71 ]

and putrefaction in the blood and other fluids, as at last stops their circulation, and the patients die. This was the case of the Greek, who spoke with your master of horse, Knightkin, at the window, anno 1752, and went and died in an hour afterwards in the vineyards of Buiuk deré; and it was said he died suddenly, tho' it was very well known to many, that he had the plague upon him for many days before this accident happened.

Mrs. Chapouis found herself indisposed for many days, anno 1758, and complained pretty much, before she was suspected to have the plauge. Captain Hills' sailor was infected in Candia 1736; was a fortnight in his passage to Smyrna, as the captain swore to me; yet he was five days in the hospital there before he died. Mr. Lisle's gardiner was indisposed twelve days before he took to his bed, and he lay in bed eight days before he died, in July 1745.

It is true, that Thucydides, in his account of the plague at Athens, relates, that some were said to die suddenly of it; which may have led others into the same way of thinking: but Thucydides (with all due regard to him) must be allowed to have known very little of the animal œconomy, for he was no physician, tho' a very famous historian; and he owns moreover, that, when the plague first attacked the Piræeum, they were so much strangers to it at Athens, that they imagined the Lacedæmonians, who then besieged them, had poisoned their wells, and that such was the cause of their death. Besides, he pretends to affirm, from the little experience he had of the plague, that the same person cannot have it twice,

which