[65] Why no animal food? _Orræus_ found broths and soups seasoned with salt and vinegar, and having the fat taken off them, and even boiled meat of a light texture, to be very restorative to the convalescent. Tr. [66] If there should be any doubts respecting the nature of the disorder on its first appearance, and because, as yet, only a single family happens to be attacked with it; Dr. _Mertens_ proposes that criminals condemned to death should be shut up with the sick, and be made to wear their clothes. Thus in two or three weeks, according as they became infected or not, it would be decided whether the disorder was the plague. But in a free country, like England, neither the removing of a family in the night-time, under the circumstances just mentioned, nor the exposing of criminals to the contagion, are measures which would be deemed justifiable. Indeed, it seems almost impossible to stifle the plague, in any country, in the very beginning, before it has become publicly known and excited a general alarm. Tr. [67] Those who are employed to burn the goods, should not stand too near the fire, so as to be exposed to the thick smoke which arises from it; and the more effectually to destroy the pestilential particles, it may be useful to throw some gun-powder or nitre into the fire. It is infinitely better to burn the infected goods than to bury them, as some authors recommend; since people may be tempted by avarice to dig them up again. [68] See _Chenot_ de Peste, p. 208. [69] _Antrechaux_, Relation de la Peste, p. 65. _Chenot_, de Peste, p. 166. [70] _Erndtel_ Warsavia physice illustrata, p. 171.