At the end of November 1770, the anatomical dissector, at the military-hospital in Moscow, is attacked with a putrid petechial fever, which carries him off in three days. The attendants upon the sick[8] of this hospital dwelt with their families in two rooms separate from the wards. In one of these rooms they fall ill one after the other, till, at length, all of them, to the number of eleven, are seized with a putrid fever, accompanied with petechiæ; buboes and carbuncles appear in some of them; and most of them die between the third and fifth day. The attendants occupying the other room are seized in like manner with the same disorder. On the 22nd of December, we are required to meet at the Board of Health. The first physician to the military-hospital states the circumstances, which I have just related, the truth of which is confirmed by the evidence of three other physicians, who farther report, that fifteen among the attendants, including their wives and children, had fallen victims to this disorder since the end of November; that five still continued ill of it; but that it had not yet shown itself in any of the hospital-wards. Eleven physicians were present at this consultation, and we all agreed that the disorder under consideration was the plague, except Dr. _Rinder_, state-physician[9], who had visited the sick, several times, in company with Mr. _Schafonsky_, and who pronounced it to be merely a putrid fever; an opinion which he maintained both in conversation and by writing. This hospital stands out of the town, near the suburb inhabited by the Germans, from which it is separated by a small stream, called the Yausa. We advised that it should be immediately shut up, and that guards should be placed round it, in order to cut off all communication; that all the attendants upon the hospital-invalids should be removed, together with their wives and children, to a detached situation, care being taken to separate the infected from the healthy; and, lastly, that all the clothes and furniture, not only of those who were dead, but likewise of those who still survived, should be burnt. The cold had set in later this year than usual; the weather was very damp and rainy until the end of December, when a hard frost came on, and continued through the remainder of the winter.