It was generally believed that the severe epidemic of bubonic plague which raged in Moscow in the year 1771 was directly connected with the expedition against the Turks. At that time the city had some 230,000 inhabitants; the streets, full of filth, were narrow, and the houses, most of which were one-story wooden structures, stood close together. According to Hecker, the beginning of the plague is obscure; fugitives from the scene of the war, and wool imported from Poland or Ukraine are both given as the original means of dissemination, but inasmuch as the disease was so widespread in the south, it is probable that it was conveyed to the north in various ways. Schafonsky, writing in Russian, described the plague in an excellent book, of which Hecker made use; the description by a surgeon named Samoilowitz,[77] who did good service during the plague, contracted the disease himself, and was roughly treated in a revolt, according to Hecker, lacks scientific merit and is unreliable. In November and December, 1770, there were a few suspected cases in a hospital in the eastern part of the city; Schafonsky diagnosed the disease as bubonic plague, while the medical officer of the city called it typhus fever. By means of strict isolation and other measures this outbreak was soon entirely checked. As early as January and February, however, indubitable cases of plague had occurred, but they were kept secret. The epidemic really began in the Imperial cloth-manufactory, where 3,000 working-men were employed; not until 130 people had died within eight weeks, was this fact made known on March 9, 1771. Since many of the working-men lived in the city and had meanwhile conveyed the disease to their homes, the measures of prevention came too late. The patients were now taken to a convent in Ukresh (near Moscow), while all the rest of the employees were quarantined. But these measures merely helped to spread the disease, since many of the working-men, in order to escape being quarantined, fled and concealed themselves in the city. When it became known that bubonic plague was present in Moscow, the nobility fled to the country. The people themselves refused to listen to any advice; nobody believed in contagion, and in September there was actually a revolt in the city against the measures that had been adopted to check the epidemic. The compulsory confinement in hospitals of infected people and the quarantining of their families led to numerous concealments. In July the pestilence had already become very widespread; many houses in the suburbs were empty, the courts of justice and workshops were closed, and, since nurses and grave-diggers were dying off rapidly, convicts were employed to do their work. In the southern part of the city a convent was converted into a hospital, and at the end of July only one attendant was on hand there to take care of 1,000 patients. The epidemic reached its climax in September, when from 600 to 1,000 persons died every day.