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fer most by it, because they take the least care and precaution, and their families are much more numerous.
The plague, as well as all other epidemical diseases, has it's rise, progress, state, and declension, when it begins to lose it's virulence, and many of the sick recover. Some years it is felt sporadically all the winter; and we hear some accidents in the Phanar, among the Greeks, among the Jews, Turks, and Armenians; and even among the Franks; for you may remember, that Pera was not clean all the winter 1762. Some years it lodges in the villages upon the Bosphorus; but during the winter it is never of any great consequence.
As to the cure of this disease, some are for bleeding plentifully, as Leonardus Botallus and Doctor Dover, &c. But in this country, it is reckoned infallible death to open a vein, and therefore bleeding is never used: But I am of opinion that a medium between these two extremes might prove more to the purpose; for, as it is an inflammatory disease, bleeding and emetics might be of use in the beginning, as soon as the patient is taken with the fever, especially if the fever is very hot and attended with a delirium or any violent head-ach; but after there begins a separation of the morbific matter, which the strength of nature, and the agitation of the fever, drive upon the surface of the body in buboes or carbuncles, bleeding or purging must prove very prejudicial; but gentle vomits might be of service even then, as they might drive out those cutaneous eruptions more powerfully than nature could do it without any help. The vomits likewise might prevent the return of the
