species o f epidemy, as appears b y an ancient A rabic manuscript, which gives an account o f the same disorder having carried off two-thirds o f the inhabitants o f West Barbary about four centuries since. But however this destructive epidemy originated, its leading features were novel, and its consequences more dreadful than the common plague o f T u rk e y , or that o f Syria, or Egyp t. Let eve ry one freely declare his own sentiments about i t ; let him assign any credible account o f its rise, or the causes that introduced so terrible a scene. I shall relate only what its symptoms were, what it actually was, and how it terminated, having been an eye-witness o f its dreadful effects, and ha vin g seen and visited many who were afflicted, and who were dyin g with it. In the month o f A p r il, 1799, a dreadful plague, o f a most destructive nature, manifested itself in the city o f Old F az , which soon after communicated itself to the new city. This unparalleled calamity, carried off one or two the first day, three or four the second day, six or eight the third day, and increasing progressively, until the mortality amounted to two in the hundred o f the aggregate population, continuing with unabating violence, ten, fifteen, or twenty d a y s ; being o f longer duration in old than in n ew.towns; then diminishing in a progressive proportion from one thousand a day to nine hundred, then to eight hundred, and so on until it disappeared. Wh atever recourse was had to medicine and to physicians was u n a v a ilin g ; so that such expedients were at length totally ¡relinquished, and the people, overpowered by this terrible scourge, lost all hopes o f su rvivin g it. W h ils t it raged in the town o f Mogodor, a small village (Diabet), situated about two miles south-east o f that place, remained uninfected, although the communication was open between them : on the thirty fourth day, however, after its first appearance at Mogodor, this v illa g e was discovered to be infected, and the disorder raged with great violence, making dreadful havock among the human species for twenty one days, carrying off, during that period, one hundred persons out o f one hundred and thirty-three, the original population o f the v illa g e , before the plague visited i t ; none died after this, and those who were infected, recovered in the.course o f a month or two, some losing an eye, or the use o f a leg or an arm Many similar circumstances might be here adduced re lative to the numerous and populous villages dispersed through the extensive Shelluh province o f Haha, all which shared a similar or a worse fate T ra v e llin g through this province shortly after the plague had exhausted itself, I saw many uninhabited ruins,, w hich 1 had before witnessed as flourishing v illa g e s ; on making enquiry'concerning the population o f these dismal remains, I was informed that in one villa g e , which contained six hundred inhabitants, four persons on ly had escaped the ravage. Other villages, which had contained four or five hundred, had only seven or eight survivors left to relate the calamities they had suffered. Families which had retired to the country to a vo id the infection, on returning to town, when a ll infection, had apparently ceased, were generally attacked, and d ie d ", a singular instance o f this kind happened at Mogodor, where, after the; mortality had subsided, a corps o f troops arrived from the c ity o f Terodant, in the province o f Suse, where the plague had been raging, and had subsided;, these troops, after remaining, three days at Mogodor, were attacked with the disease, and it raged exclusively among them for about a month, during whicli.
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