DR. OSBORSE on tl~e Plague of Athens. 309

the poor patient, and frees him from the discomfort of impeded respiration, and the ridicule attaching to his former noseless condition. One fact is worthy of mention, as affording a fine example of. the inexhaustible resources of nature to meet al- tered conditions of parts: as in an old, unredueed dislocation of the humerus or t~mur a new socket is formed, and the head of the displaced bone changed to meet its altered position; so here, though at first the flap from the forehead was so soft and thin that it moved to avid ti'o in expiration and inspira- tion, yet after union had been confirmed, the blood-vessels supplied so hard a nutritious material to the new nose, that it became firm and thick, and not very much less consistent than the old. This may reassure those about to undertake the operation.

ART,XIV.- -On ghePlague of Athens, as describedby T, ]~ucydides. By JONATHAN OSBORNE, M.D., M. R. I. A., King s Professor ofMateria Medica, Physician to Mercer's Hospital, &c. &c.

THERE are certain subjects connected with history which ever have been, and ever shall be, matters of doubt and controversy. They remain as open questions, on account of the impossibility of their ever being definitively settled, rl~he authorship of Ju- nius was one of these, and the nature of the disease commonly called the Plague of Athens, as described by Thucydides, is another. In the latter case the difficulty has arisen from the want of knowledge of medicine on the part of the historian, who was unable to select the appropriate and diagnostic symp- toms of the disease, and who, in embodying the facts observed in a great number of cases in one general description, has pre- sented a picture not resembling any one individual case. Hence. much dittieulty arises when we seek to identify it with any disease known to physicians. It has been generally agreed upon that it was the plague ; but at the close of the last cen- tury Dr. Willan endeavoured to prove it to have been the small- pox, and Dr. Collier has the merit of originality in bringing ibrward, in a very interesting little work, a new opinion--that it was scarlatina.

In order to guide the judgment of the reader on this sub- ject, he must be acquainted with the circumstances under which the disease occurred. The Athenians, at the suggestion of Pericles, had abandoned the surrounding country to the enemy ; had sent away the sheep and cattle to Euboea and other islands, and had crowded themselves into the city, so that, although a

310 Da. OsBoas~. on the Plague of Athens,

few had house-room, yet the greater number must have been compelled to occupy the temples and vacant spaces; and at length many were forced to betake themselves to the long walls extending from the city to the port. The invasion of Attica by the Laced~emonians and Bceotlans, to the amount of 60,000 men, when the summer was at its height and the corn nearly ripe, caused a total destruction of the crops. I t was ir~ this state of things that the disease described by Thucydides in the fol- lowing words, occurred a : - -

" It was reported to have originated from Ethiopia, which is above Egypt ; then to have descended to Egypt and Libya, and to have invaded a great part of the territory of the king (of Persia). Suddenly it fell on the city of Athens, and first attacked the inhabitants of the Pirmus, so that the Peloponne- sians were accused of p.oisoning the cisterns, there being no fountains there at that t~me. Thence it extended to the upper city, and many more died. I shall describe what took place, having been ill myseff, and having seen others suffering from it.

" T h e year in which it broke out was, as admitted by all, peculiarly healthy with regard to "other diseases, and all other illnesses tended to end in this; persons in perfect health, and without any known cause, were suddenly seized with violent flushings about the head (rnc ,:e~aX~r O~ppat "taXvpal), redness and inflammation of the eyes (rosy 5~Oa~l~JJv ~pvO~?~ava ~:al r162 and in the interior the pharynx and the tongue be- came immediately bloody (a[pav~o~?), and the breath unnatural and fetid. To this succeeded sneezing and hoarseness. :Not long afterwards the affection descended to the chest with vio- lent coughing, and whenever it settled at the heart it upset it (aw~rp~ army), and purgatmns of bile ensued of all kinds which have been named by physicians, and accompanied by great pare. A hollow hiccup (~,b.7~ ~Ev~)) came on, in most cases giving rise to violent spasm, an some abating immediately afterwards, in others continuing for a considerable time. The body, when touched at the surface, was neither very hot nor pale, but reddish, livid, and covered with small vesicles and ulcers (r ~,w, raira~C ~z~pa'iC ~a't '~,~a4v e ~ v O ~ J C ) , but the in- te r ior was in such a burning state that even light garments or fine linen were not borne. They preferred to lie naked, and it was a great enjoyment to them to plunge into cold water. Many who were neglected ran to the cisterns, urged by insa- tiable thirst, and with the same result, whether they had much

Thucydides, lib. ii. 48~

as described by Thucydides. 311

or little drink. Restlessness and want of sleep continued throughouL As long as the disease was in its highest state, there was no wasting of the body; on the contrary, it resisted this state of suffering beyond expectation. Thus, most perished on the ninth and seventh day by the internal heat, while they still retained some strength ; or, iftheyescaped, then the disease, descending into the bowels, and violent ulceration taking place there, with a diarrhoea which could not be restrained, many subsequently died f~om weakness. The disease, which r menced in the head, passed through the whole body, and who- ever survived its greatest dangers was liable to a seizure of the extremities, which left its marks behind, for it fell on the pu- denda, the fingers, and toes, and many escaped af ter having been deprived of these parts. Some lost their eyes. Some on their recovery became forgetful of everything, and no longer recognised either themselves or their eonnexions.

" The character of the disease was beyond the power of words to describe; and it also came on each individual with a severity not in the usual course of human nature. I t was ma- nifestly different from ordinary maladies in this, that when a great number of the dead remained unburied, the birds or quadrupeds did not approach them, and if any tasted them, they died. As a filrther proof, an evident scarcity of birds of that kind ensued. The dogs also, on account of their living in society with men, afforded a still more evident illustration of the same fact.

" Such, then, was the general character of the disease, omitting the exceptional cases. None of the customary dis- eases occurred at the same time; whatever there were termi- nated in it. Death took place whether the patients were neglected or cared for. There was no remedy to be relied on, for what was beneficial to one injured another. No state of bodily strength, or of weakness, appeared to avail against it; and all succumbed, even though protected by every dietetical care. But the most dreadful part of the calamity was the state of mental depression which came on when individuals perceived themselves to be ill; for suddenly, losing all hope, they gave themselves up for. lost, and thus died like sheep while taking it from one another in the course of' their at- tendance on the sick, and thus was occasioned the greatest mortality; for when, through fear, they avoided each other, they died in solitude, and many houses were completel, y emptied in consequence of'want of attendance; and ffthey lent assistance, they also died. In the same predicament were those who, influenced- by f~elings of duty and virtue, were ashamed

312 Da. OSBORNS on the Plogue of Athens,

to spare themselves, and did not remit their attentions, even when the members of the family had been worn out by the groans of the dying, and overcome by the extremity of affliction.

" Still more, however, than these did they who had passed through it evince pity for the dying and diseased, as well from the knowledge they possessed of' what they had to suffer, as from the fact that they themselves were in a state of' safety, because the disease did not attack the same person a-second tim~ so as to prove i~atal. Such were considered fortunate by others, and in the temporary excess oftheirjoy indulged in the fanciful }lope that they should never be carried off by any other disease.

" I t was an additional grievance to the sufferers that a con- flux of the inhabitants of the country into the city took place, which was equally prejudicial to the latter, for, in consequence of the want of house accommodation, many were compelled in the hot season to take up their abode in confined huts, and death spread without restraint. No.decency or propriety was ob- served ; the dead and dying layheaped upon one another; while others, only half alive, were reeling about the streets and in the vicinity of every tbuntain, in order to indulge their longing for water. The sacred places in which they had fixed their dwellings were filled with the bodies of those who had died in them, for, under the pressure of the general calamity, men, not knowing whither to turn, disregarded every distinction between things sacred or profane. All the laws concerning burial of the dead were set aside. Each disposed of the dead of his household in whatever way.he could effect it. Many resorted to shameful modes of getting rid of them, from want of those necessary materials which had been previously made use of. In some cases they even placed them on pyres which had been constructed by other parties, and, anticipating the real owners, applied the fire themselves �9 in other instances they took advantage of pyres already burning, casting their dead into the flames, and then took their departure.

" Cha 58 - -The expedition which was dispatched during p c �9 . �9 "~

the same summer, under Hagnon, against Potldsea and the Chal- cidians of Thrace, was obliged to return to Athens without having effected any of its objects. For the disease spread not only among the men of this expedition, but it also attacked those who were already serving there, and who until then had been healthy; and the armament lost one thousand and fifty out of the fbur thousand chosen troops who had embarked a short time previously on this service."

It appears, according to the note by Dr. Collier (p. 74), that

as described by Thucydides. 313

the disease broke out in the second year of the war, and having raged with peculiar violence for a season, it became, during the third and fourth years, less frequent and less severein itsattacks ; but in the fifth year it revived, so to speak, with something of its original intensity, and again declined, and eventually dis- appeared.

Dr. Willan's opinion, that the disease above described was the small-pox, rests principally on the eruption described as consisting of' phlyctc~nm and small ulcers, the rest of the symp- toms being either those common to fevers in general, or else such as are totally dissimilar to anything occurring in small- pox. But inasmuch as there is no description of small-pox, or of any disease'resembling it, by the Greek or Latin physicians, up to the time of Rhazes, in the tenth or beginning of the eleventh century; and moreover, as it has not been noticed by any of the historians or satirical poets of Rome, to whom the disfigurement produced by ' i t could not fail to supply sub- jects infinitely more inviting than many which they have adopted, it is, in the highest degree, improbable that they were acquainted with it, and also most improbable that a disease, so contagious, and so certain to be continued once it had com- menced, could have existed at this early period, and then have disappeared during so many centuries afterwards.

The opinion advanced by Dr. Collier, that the plague of Athens was scarlatina, and which opinion he has advocated with much ability in his interesting work, lately published% reposes on the fact that scarlatina, in all its forms, and espe- cially in that formerly known as angina maligna, or putrid sore throat, occurs epidemieallv ; that death occurrin- on the seventh or ninth day resembles the mortality of scarlatina; that the disease never attacked the same individual a second time, and, above all, that it commenced in the mucous surfaces of the head and throat, and proceeded downwards in the same order as is so frequently observed in scarlatina.

Those coincidences, however, are not sufficient to prove an identity of the two diseases. Scarlatina, the plague, and small- PdOX, are all remarkable as usually attacking the same indivi-

ual only onee,--the first and last proverbially so; and out of 4400 cases of infection of the plague, Russel met with only 28 well-ascertained cases of recurrence; and although in all the three diseases exceptions to this generally received exemption

" The History of the Plague of Athens." translated from Thucydides; with Re- marks illustrative of its Pathology, by Charles Collier, M. D., F. R. ~., Fellow of the Royal College of Physieians~ and Honorary Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons, London : 1857.

314 Da. OSBORNn on the Ph~gue of Athens,

have occurred, yet not to such an extent in any one of them as to derange this point of resemblance between them. Again, they all come on epidemically ; in all, death frequently occurs on the seventh or ninth day, so that this circumstance forms no distinctive mark of scarlatina; and the arguments of Dr. Collier, for fixing on scarlatina, being reduced to the presumed simila- rity between it and the description of the appearances in the mouth and throat, this description requires to be carefully examined.

The redness and inflammation of the eyes are not charac- teristic of scarlatina, but rather ofmeasles~ or of one of those forms of catarrhal fever which have so frequently been observed and described when occurring epidemically as influenza. The ap- pearance of the pharynx and tongue, which Dr. Collier, along with other translators, has rendered blood-red (a~f~ar~), c a n -

n o t be understood to consist merely in that colour, inasmuch as it is the natural colour of those parts in health. The word must, therefore, be taken in its original signification, ' bloody,' which I think will more clearly be proved to be the author's meaning ~vhen we proceed a little further in the consideration of the subject.

There is, however, no part of the description more unlike scarlatina than that of the appearances of the skin. Instead of the diffused redness and the peculiarly elevated temperature of the skin appertaining to that disease, we have in the descrip- tion small phlyctcence and ulcers, and the external temperature of the body not hot compared with the internal heat. Again, scar- latina offers no instances of loss of the eyes or of the extremi- ties, or loss of the use of those parts, as ingeniously suggested by Dr. Collier. Neither has there ever been an instance re- corded o~" epidemic scarlatina, or angina maligna, which did not chiefly attack children, of whom our historian makes no mention, nor of one attacking an army, as this disease did when, amongst the troops sent to Potidma and Thrace, it cut,off 1050 men out of 4000 within the space of forty days. Again, de- pression of spirits is no peculiar symptom of scarlatina in any of its stages, although occupying a prominent place in the de- scription, which makes no mention of dropsical swellings, a well- known concomitant of that disease.

And now for the plague. On comparing this descrip- tion with the numerous and close descriptions of the plague, as it occurs periodically in the Levant, drawn up by medical observers, we find much that cannot be reconciled. The dis- tinguishing character of the plague is the breaking out of abscesses of the lymphatic glands within the first few days. With-

as described b~Tfiucydides. 315

out this symptom there is nothing whereby we can diagnose between it and an3; epidemic typhoid fever. But in the descrip- tion of our historian, the phlyct~nm and the ulcers are men- tined as occurring in no one part of the body more than another, but appearing like an eruption or efflorescence (~nvOn~dc) on the surface.

When it .is stated that the disease commenced in Egypt , and passed f~om thence to Libya and Persia, it certainly in this resembles the plague, which even at the present time pro- ceeds from Egypt , w~ere it is endemic, to commit its ravages in the Levant. But Egypt has been long recognised as the source of many epidemic fevers beside the plagueS; and a great fact to be recollected is, that it has been proved that a temperate heat alone will tolerate the presence of the plague, and that whenever the thermometer ranges above 80 ~ , or much below 60 ~ Fahr., it is extinguished. I t was observed at Aleppo during many years that it ceased when the heats of summer came onb; now the disease at Athens broke out in summer. Our author expressly informs us that at the very com- mencement of the summer the Laced~emonians and their allies in- vaded Attica with two-thirds of their forces, as on the former occasion; and; after encamping, they laid waste the country. But they had not been many days in Attica before the disease began to appear among the Athenians, causingsuch a destruc- tion of life as had never before been witnessed. This fact alone, that the disease broke out in summer, in the hot climate of Athens, is in direct opposition to experience of the usual time for the visitations of' the plague, and in limine must sug- gest a doubt as to the disease described by Thucydides being that which is now called the plague.

We have, moreover, some valuable concurrent evidence concerning the diseases p~evalent in Greece at this period. I f the plague raged at Athens, it must be "~uplaosed to have also extended to the Grecian islands, between which and Egypt there was a constant communication. Now, Hippo- crates was at this time, according to Soranus, in or about the thirtieth year of his age; he was practising in the island of Thasos, and in the adjacent regions of Thrace and Thessaly. Without placing any reliance on the fact stated by Soranus, that he once delivered Athens from a dreadfill pestilence which was devastating the city, because it could not be the disease now before us, inasmuch as he states that it baffled all the efforts of the physicians, yet it can be proved that there

a Prosper Alpilms~ i. 19. b Russel, "Natural History of Aleppo," p. 228.

316 Da. OSBORne on the Plague of Athens,

was much direct communidation between Thrace and Athens. Thucydides himself was possessed of property in Thrace. He ranked among the principal personages of that country% and appears from his own words to have at one time resided in Thasos b ; therefore it cannot be denied that Hippocrates must have. had opportunities, of knowing all the circumstances re- lating to the &sense at Athens. Now, in his " Epidemics%" which book contains the notes of his cases, and in the third book of which especially he has a distinct section, entitled ' the pestilential constitution' (~:ar~ara~tc ~ o t / ~ ? C ) , there is first an account of the weather during the year, with a general epitome of the prevailing diseases. I t concludes with his notes of iburteen cases occurring under his daily care in Thasos and the adjacent parts of Thrace. These cases, observed with a master's eye, and evidently reported with the utmost fidelity, prove that the plague did not at that time prevail in Thrace or the adjacent islands. They are as follows, v i z . : ~

No. 1, at Tbasos, remittent fever; died on the 120th day. No. 2, at Thasos, a remittent after child-bearing; died on

the 80th day. No. 3, at Thasos, a remittent; death on the 10th day. ~o . 4, at Thasos, phrenitis; death on the 4th day. No. 5, at Larissa, continued fever ; death on the 4th day. l~o. 6, at Abdera, acute fever, resolved with perspiration

on the 4th day. Epistaxis. ~o . 7, at Abdera, acute fever, resolved on 27th day with

perspiration. Epistaxis. ~o. 8, at Abdera, pleurisy, treated by venesection; re-

solved on the 34th day.

a IrvuOa~JpEvo~ ro~ Oowv~ i~v ar~alu re ~%e~r ~ xpva~l~oy t ~ e r d k ~ , ~p)~aq, lac eu ~'~ ~v~p~ ragra Op~lc~ ~a~ dTr' dvro9 (~uaaOa~ ~v voTc lvp~rotc rw~ y0retpo~rDv.--iv. 105.

b Oov~v~i$yu 5C rd$~ r ovra ~r~pt Oaaov.--iv. 104. c The edition which I possess of the first and third books of the "Epidemics"

(Greek and Latin) was published in Dublin~ in 1736, by Dr. Henry Cope. He was President of the King and Queen's College of Physicians, and State Physician ; he was one of a family long seated at Loughgall, county ofArmagh ; lived in Will iam~ street; died in 1742, and was buried in St. Anne's churchyard. He was a pupil of Boerhaave. The work commences with an elegant Latin address to the Duke of Dorset, then Lord Lieutenant, followed by commendatory letters from Boerhaave and Bryan Robinson. Dr. Cope's object has been to illustrate the cases described in the "Epidemics~" by comparing them with corresponding aphorisms and passages selected from the prognostics. The Greek tex t of those cases is well suited to illustrate how directly from nature they must have been taken. So far from being polished for pub- lication are they~ that~ like the daily reports kept in a pocket-book, we frequently find adverbs without verbs~ and adjectives witbout nouns. Cope's work clearly proves that the aphorisms and other didactic works of the Father of Medicine were not only founded on his actual experience, but were frequently exact epitomes of facts observed at the patient's bed side.

as described by Tlmcydides. 317

No. 9, at Abdera, continued fever, with deafness ; repeated epistaxis; resolved on the 120th day.

No. 10, at Abdera, continued fever, after drinking and debauchery; resolved by perspiration on the 24th day.

No. 11, delirium tremens in a female, fl'om excess of grief; resolved on the 4th day.

:No. 12, at Larissa, acute fever in a virgin, with epistaxis, and first appearance of the menstrua; resolved on the 6th day.

No. 13, at Abdcra, disease of the liver; death on the 34th

daYNo. 14, at Cyzicum, puerperal mania; death on the 16th day.

Besides the above, the cases described in the first book of the "Epidemics," as well as in the first section of this third book, were almost all either remittent or continued fever, or dysenteries, and afford no indication of the prevalence of the plague, or of small-pox or scarlatina. They bear a very close resemblance to the diseases of the same climate, as described by modern observers. Thus Goodison a describes the variable- ness of the climate from the sirocco, the most prevalent dis- ease being fever of every, type, diversified according to the season: in winter and spring, lntermitteuts; and in the early part of summer, continued fever, often accompanied by inflam- mations of the head, chest, stomach, or bowels; while in the latter part of summer and autumn they become remittent. In Minorca, almost similarly circumstanced in geographical posi- tion, the most frequent diseases are tertian fevers, sometimes beginning in a mild form, then running into continued forms, and terminating in dysenteryL

Malaria is well known to occur frequently all along the western shores of the Morea. Lord Byron died of the remit- tent at Missilonghi. The whole plain of Thessaly is within the range of Greek malaria. The islands Lemnos, Naxos, and Paros, have been remarked as peculiarly pestiferous on ac- count of these diseases. I t is observed on board ship that the land-breeze often brings to the seamen the diseases of the shore, and that the character of the disease is often peculiar to certain limited localities, just as the Waleheren fever was totally different from that at the other side of the Scheldt%

In one passage a, speaking of the pestilential year, ttippo. crates mentions ulcers and swellings at the groins, but this is

a Ionian Is lands: London, 1822. b Cleghorn, Diseases of Minorca: London, 1751. e Macculloch on Malar ia : London, 1827. d Hip. Epid., lib. iii. 16.

318 DR. OsBoarcs on the Plague of Atltens,

in connexion with ulcerations of the mouth, chronic ophthal- mia, dysenteries, and various affections; so that during the time occupied by his work on the " Epidemics," the plague does not appear to have come under his notice. Did it pre- vall to any extent, however small, how could he avoid describ- ing some case recognisable as such? This pestilential season was characterized by the prevalence of the sirocco, and thus he calls it Eror vdrtov ; but the absence of any case which can be identified with the plague, although the general mortality was great, sufficiently demonstrates that the disease was not prevalent at that time in Greece.

When we examine the description of Thucydides, we find no particular symptom to fix on as indicative of the plague more than of any malignant and fatal fever; but there are many which cannot be referred either to the plague or to any other epidemic f~ver on record. In the first place the bloody appearance of the mouth and tongue is not to be confbunded with a merely deeper shade of colour of these parts, according to the views of' Dr. Collier; fbr we have in Lucretius, whose description of the disease is mainly taken from Thucydides, the following passage, which gives an exact translation of the word a~l~arw~t}:--" Sudabant etiam fauces intrinsecus atro sanguine, et ulceribus vocis via septa coibat; atque animi in- terpres manabat lingua cruore TM. That this hemorrhage was accompanied by others would appear from the variety of the purgations mentioned, and not likely to come under the no- tice of a non-medical narrator, unless they were ~nelenous, such being a necessary consequence of blood effused in the mouth and received into the stomach. That from the nose is specially mentioned by Lucretius b : - - " Corruptus sanguis ple- ms ex narlbus xbat ; as also that from the bowels : - - E t mgr~ profluvie alvi"%

The hiccup which occurred in most cases, so much so as to attract the attention of Thucydides, is characteristic of gangrene, and, taken in connexion with the bleeding of the parts within the mouth and throat, presents a striking picture of the low and congested state of the circulation belonging to scurvy. Hiccup is stated by Russel to be seldom observed in the plague at Aleppo a, and is not frequent even in the lowest types of idiopathic fevers, unless when the abdominal viscera have been primarily engaged: that such was the case at Athens is evident. Again, the putrid fetor of the breath

a Lucretius de Return ~atura, lib. vi. 1145. ~ Lucretius, lib. vi. 1102. r Lucretius, lib. vi. 1199. d Russel oll the Plague, p. 990.

as described by T]tucydides. 319

fi'om the commencement of the disease, along with the cool and livid state of the skin, the diarrh(ea and the sense of in- ternal heat, restlessness, and insatiable thirst, complete a pic- ture of what we have sometimes occasion to witness in epidemic visitations of scurvy even in those countries, where the exist- ence of hospitals and of improved diet and Christian philan- thropy may be supposed always at hand to arrest it. At Athens all. the. population of the surrounding, territory, was pent up. within, the walls. The crops on whmh the subsistence. of the inhabitants depended were destroyed; their diet must have been nearly restricted to what could be conveyed to them by sea. Their political state was at the lowest, with its necessary consequence of despondency and mutual mistrust and recrimination. It was almost inevitable, and no more than what was, a priori, to be expected, that scurvy should break out, and that, once having broken out, it should con- tinue its ravages even after the city had been relieved. In many instances it may have assumed a chronic fbrm, and this appears to have been the case with Pericles himself; for when he died of the disease he had no violent symptoms, but rather seemed to sink under a lingering affection, which graflually wasted his body and enfeebled his mind; .and his enemies attributed the d~'sease, which had been fatal to so many, to his mistaken policy in crowding the city with such multi- tudes of people, where they were confined in a state of total inaction during the heat of summer%

Neither the loss of parts, nor the loss of use of parts, has ever been enumerated among the consequences of the plague, or of any other febrile disease with which the description could correspond; but we find the same consequences described as resulting from scurvy when occurring in its severest fbrms, as on board ship, before the necessity of ventilation and of vege- table diet was known. This is the more remarkable, as they have led another non-medical author, but under very different circumstances, to describe them in very similar language.

In order to enable the reader to form his judgment on this point, I subjoin the, description of. the .scurvy as it occurred on board Lord Anson s squadron during hls voyage by the Straits of Magellan, in.the year 1749. . What r e n d e r s . . this description peculiarly valuable for tMs comparison is, that the author was not. a pyh sician, but, like Thucydides, made. his observations without any professional knowledge of disease, and that he has recorded those phenomena which produced the most striking effect on the mind of a non-medical observer. The author

" Plutarch, Pericles.

320 Da. OSBORNE on the Plague of At]~ens,

was the Rev. Richard Walters, chaplain to the squadron, and although possessed of a good English style, yet he nowhere appears to have indulged in classical recollections, and cannot be supposed to have had the description of Thucydides in view when he penned the following passage s : - -

" Its symptoms are inconstant and innumerable, and its pro- gress and effects extremely, irregular; for. scarcely any two persons have complaints exactly resembhng each other, and where there hath been found some conformity in the symptoms, the order of their appearance has been totally different. How- ever, though it frequently puts on the form of many other diseases, and is, therefore, not to be described by any exclusive and infallible criterions, yet there are some symptoms which are more common than the rest, and, occurring the oftenest, deserve a more particular enumeration. These common ap- pearances are large discoloured spots, dispersed over the whole surface of the body,--swelled legs, putrid gums, and, above all, an extraordinary lassitude o f the whole body, especially after any exercise, however inconsiderable : and this lassitude at last degenerates into a proneness to swoon, and even to die on the least exertion of strength, or even on the least motion.

" This disease is likewise usually attended with a strange dejection of the spirits, and with shiverings, tremblings, and a disposition to be seized with the most dreadful terrors on the slightest accident. Indeed, it was most remarkable, in all our reiterated experience of this malady, that whatever discouraged our people, or a~ any time damped their hopes, never failed to add new vigour to the distemper; ibr it usually killed those who were in the last stages of it, and confined those to their hammocks who were before capable of some kind of duty ; so that it seemed as if alacrity of mind and sanguine thoughts were no contemptible preservatives from its fatal malignity."

" I t often produced, putrid, fevers, pleurisies,. . the jaundice, and violent rheumatic paros, and sometimes xt occasioned an obstinate costiveness which was generally attended with a dif- ficulty of breathing, and this was esteemed the most deadly of all the scorbutic symptoms: at other times the whole body, but especially the legs, were subject to ulcers &the worst kind, attended with. rotten bones, and such a luxuriancy of. fungous. flesh as ymlded to no remedy. But a most extraordinary cir- cumstance, and what would be scarcely credible upon any single evidence, is that the scars of wounds which had been for many years healed were forced open again by this violent dis-

"Account of Anson's Voyage round the World." By Richard Walters, Chaplain. London: 1749. Page 101.

as described by Thucydides. 321

temper. Of this there was a remarkable instance in one of the invalids on board the Centurion, who had been wounded about fifty years betbre at the battle of the Boyne ; for though he was cured soon after, and had continued well for a number of years past, yet, on his being attacked by the scurvy, his wounds in the progress of his disease broke out afresh, and appeared as if they had never been healed : nay, what is still more astonishing, the callus of a broken bone, which had been completely formed for a long time, was found to be hereby dissolved, and the frac- ture seemed as if it had never been consolidated. Indeed, the effects of this disease were, in almost every instance, wonderful ; for many of our people, though confined to their hammocks, appeared to have no inconsiderable share of health, for they eat and drank heartily, were cheerful, and talked with much seeming vigour, and with a loud, strong tone of voice; and yet on their being the least moved, though it was only from one part of the ship to the other, and that too in their ham- mocks, they have immediately expired; and others, who have confided in their seeming strength, and have resolved to get out of their hammocks, have died before they could well reach the deck; nor was it an uncommon thing for those who were able to walk the deck and to do some kiiad of duty to drop down dead in an instant, on any endeavour to act with thqir utmost effort, many of our people having perished in this man- her during the course of our voyage.

" A f t e r passing the Straits le Maire few were unaffected, and in April forty-three died of it on board the Centurion. In May we lost near double that number, and, as we did not get to land till the middle &June , the mortality went on increas- ing, and the disease extended so prodigiously, that after the loss of above two hundred men we could not at last muster more than six foremost men in a watch capable of duty."

In fine, taking into account the circumstances under which the disease described by Thucydides came on, - - the crowded city, the necessary consequences of bad diet and ventilation, the depressed state of' the l~ublic mind, arid then the leading symptopas in his description,--the bleeding within the mouth, the phlyctmnm, which appear to have been petechia3, the de- spondency, the tendency of all other diseases to assume the same low thrill of disease, and the transmission of it along with the naval expedition to Potid~ea,--it appears to have been the same affection which has so frequently occurred when a number of human beings are confined under similar circumstances as at Breda in 1562, but which, from its more frequent occurrence at sea, has been termed sea scurvy.

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