A Treatise on the Plague and Yellow Fever: With an Appendix, containing histories of the plague at Athens in the time of the Peloponnesian War; at Constantinople in the time of Justinian; at London in 1665; at Marseilles in 1720Tytler, James
History
A Treatise on the Plague and Yellow Fever: With an Appendix, containing histories of the plague at Athens in the time of the Peloponnesian War; at Constantinople in the time of Justinian; at London in 1665; at Marseilles in 1720
Tytler, James
Plague -- Early works to 1800; Yellow fever -- Early works to 1800
From other experiments it appeared that even the pestilential poison
itself, taken into the stomach of dogs, did not produce any deleterious
effects. “A dog of the Hospital of the _Mail_ in Marseilles, who
followed the surgeons when they went to dress the sick, used greedily
to swallow the corrupted glands, and the dressings charged with pus
which they used to take off the plague sores: he licked up the blood
that he found spilt on the ground in the infirmary; and this he did
for three months, being always gay, brisk, well, full of play, and
familiar with all comers.” The health and briskness of this unfortunate
dog proved his ruin, by making him the subject of philosophical
experiment. A drachm of the pestiferous bile injected into the crural
vein, killed him in four days. He had a considerable hæmorrhage from
the wound the night before he died, and he had also a disagreeable
smell both while living and after he was dead. Two other dogs, which
had swallowed a quantity of pestiferous bile, became heavy and
melancholy, refused their food, and showed other signs of disorder;
but all these went off in a short time, and no signs of the distemper
appeared.
These experiments induced M. Deidier to suppose that the contagion of
the plague lay only in the bile; but the following experiment shows
that the blood was equally infected, and capable of communicating the
disease, and that of the most malignant species. It was made by M.
Couzier, physician to the infirmary at Alais, and in the Philosophical
Transactions we have the following account: “I took a quantity of blood
from a person dead of the plague, and mixed it with warm water, which
mixture I attempted to inject into the crural vein of a dog, but the
end of the syringe being too large to enter the vein, the experiment
did not succeed. This made me resolve to try to lay some of the same
infected blood upon the wound. This I accordingly did, and covered it
with a dressing, which the dog got off in the night. I found the next
morning that the dog had licked the wound, and that he refused his
food. Towards night he began to bemoan himself, and gave signs of an
approaching death. The next morning I found him dead, the wound being
considerably swelled and gangrened, and the edges round the swelling
were likewise gangrened.
“Upon opening the body, we found the liver something larger than usual,
with spots of a livid purple, as in the bodies of persons dead of
the plague. In the stomach was found a quantity of black coagulated
blood, of the size of a hen’s egg. This in all likelihood was what he
had swallowed upon licking the wound. The heart was very large, with
a black grumous blood in the ventricles, and the auricles were turned
blackish and gangrenous.”
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