Other distempers, called by the general name of _Epidemics_, have at different times infected whole cities, and even overspread extensive regions; but these, though sometimes very fatal, have always been found so much inferior to the distemper of which we treat, that, on a comparison, we may justly say, though epidemics have slain their _thousands_, the true plague has slain its _ten thousands_. In speaking of the destructive ravages of epidemics, we may count the dead by tens, by hundreds, or by thousands; but in the true plague, always by thousands, by myriads,[2] or by millions. Procopius, when speaking of a plague which desolated the world in his time, compares the number of the dead to the sand of the sea; and Mr. Gibbon, who attempts to specify, thinks they might amount to an hundred millions;[3] and I cannot help being of opinion, that the destruction generally occasioned by violent plagues, amounts to about one half of the population; the reasons for which opinion will be given in the course of this work. In all violent plagues, we hear of the dead being left unburied; of their being cast into pits, &c. But if we wish to make any gross comparison between the destructive power of the true plague, and that of any other violent epidemic, we cannot, perhaps, have a better instance than that which took place at Bassorah (a city on the confines of Persia) in the years 1773 and 1780.[4] In the former of these years that city was visited by the true plague; and in the latter, by an epidemic remittent fever. The fever was most violent in its kind, and destroyed twenty-five thousand in the city and neighbourhood; but the true plague, no fewer than two hundred and seventy-five thousand in the same place. Supposing the two computations therefore to be equally exact, we must calculate this plague to have been eleven times more deadly than the epidemic. If therefore the ingenious classifiers, in modern times, have brought into alliance the plague with other epidemic diseases, and characterised the former from the latter; we may justly say, that they have fallen into the same error with other naturalists, who characterise the superior from the inferior; the lion from the cat, not the cat from the lion. As to the remedies applied in these diseases, doubtful in epidemics, they so universally fail in the true plague, that, notwithstanding the improved state of medicine, we may yet say, it stands among diseases, in a great measure, like a giant without any champion to oppose; like a poison without any antidote. [2] A myriad is generally supposed to contain ten thousand. [3] Gibbon’s History, vol. iv. [4] Transact. of Society for improving Medical Knowledge.