Rivinus attributed the propagation of the plague at Leipsic wholly to fear. The French physicians, who wrote on the plague at Marseilles, went so far as to deny its being contagious, and ascribed its propagation chiefly to fear.” As for the cause of the plague itself, Dr. Fordyce supposes it to be produced by an infection of a particular kind. That which takes place in Syria and Egypt, he says, has only been clearly described by Dr. Russel; and it cannot be gathered from the accounts whether this may be originally produced without having been propagated as the first class of infections above mentioned are. “That disease (says he) called the plague, which ravaged this country (England) on considering the histories of the disease, seems to have been a _fever_,[83] produced by infections of the first class which have been enumerated.” Dr. Moore has given an account of the origin of a plague, which, if it could be depended upon, would decide the question concerning the origin of this dreadful distemper without previous infection. This passage is extracted from the History of the Royal Medical Society for the years 1777 and 1778. “Dr. Mitchell, physician to the hospital at Smyrna, appears, according to a memoir of which he is the author, sent by M. le Baron de Tott to the Medical Society to believe in the spontaneity of the plague (or that it arises of itself without any predisposing cause in the body) for proof of which he cites the following circumstance: A solitary shepherd, having no communication with any body, fell sick while he was tending his flocks; he went into an inhabited part, where he communicated the plague with which he found that he was attacked. This circumstance would prove much, if it was certain that the shepherd had no communication with others; if it were known how long, and with what precaution, he had been secluded from company: but the proofs of these are too difficult to be established to allow of any conclusion to be drawn from the fact. We are obliged therefore to acknowledge [it to be a doubtful matter] whether it is in fact a country that is the cradle of the plague; what country this is, supposing that such an one exists; or, finally, whether it sometimes appears spontaneously, and whether the first whom it attacks becomes the focus from whence it emanates.” [83] This is expressly denied by Dr. Hodges, who had innumerable opportunities of seeing the distemper.