In the first mentioned year the Visconte Bernabo made regulations, the object of which was to guard against the spreading of the plague by intercourse and mixing with those who were infected; and with that view it was ordered, that those afflicted with this disease should be removed from the city, and allowed either to die or to recover in the open air. Those who acted otherwise were to suffer capital punishment, and their property was to be confiscated. But twenty-five years after it was strictly commanded, that the clothes and things used by those who had the plague should be purified with great care; and in 1383 it was forbidden under severe punishment to suffer any infected person to enter the country. These means, however imperfect, must have been attended with utility, because they were again employed during a new danger of the same kind in the fifteenth century.

The Venetians are entitled to the merit of haying improved the establishments formed to prevent infection; and that their example was followed in other countries is generally admitted. But the year in which quarantine was first ordered by them to be performed is uncertain. Muratori,* following Lorenzo Candio, gives the year 1484, and Howard says that the college of health was instituted in 1448.

• Lib. i +

11

p. 65.

principal Lazarettos. Lond. 1789. 4to. p. 12.

This much is certain, that all these means against infection, which, though far from being perfect, have secured Europe from this misfortune, were not invented or proposed by physicians, but ordered by the police, contrary to their theory. The latter seems to have known, at an early period, the most dangerous causes of infection, and to have formed at a very great expense precautionary means, the observance of which was enforced under pain of the severest punishment.

The reason why forty days were chosen to be a proof whether people were infected or not, arose, no doubt, from the doctrine of the physicians in regard to the critical days of many diseases. The fortieth day seems to have been considered as the last or extreme of all the critical days; on which subject many physicians appear to have entertained various astrological conceits.* On the Turkish

* See G. W. Wedelii exercitatio de quadragesima medica, in his Centuria exercitationum medico-philologicarum. Jenæ 1701. 4to. Decas iv. p. 16. Quadragesima medica terminus est morborum acutorum; terminus limitaneus inter acutos et chronicos, ultimus acutorum, primus chronicorum, inde productorum, ut, qui ultra quadragesimum diem durat morbus, febris in primis primaria vel comitata, ex acutorum classe in chronicorum transeat. p. 17. Non minus et idem terminus criticus hinc est ad indagandam contagii latentis in corpore vim, unde frequentissimus est terminus la quarantaine, seu ab aliorum societate quadragenia sejunctio indicta illis, qui a locis peste infectis vel suspectis appellunt. p. 20. Wedel mentions various diseases in which Hippocrates determines the fortieth day to be critical. Compare Riegers Anmerkung zu Hippocratis Aphorismi. Haga Com. 1767. 8vo. i. p. 221.

frontiers this period was reduced, under the emperor Joseph II, to twenty days.*

The bills of health are older than they are said said to be by Brownrigg,† for Zegata asserts that they were first established in 1527, when the plague again made its appearance in Europe.

• Martini Lange rudimenta doctrinæ de peste. Offenbachii 1791. 8vo. See Gottingische Anzeigen von gelehrt. Sachen, 1791. p. 1799.

+ In the book quoted by me vol. ii. p. 147. In the Gotting.gel. Anzeigen 1772. p. 21, the name of the author is improperly printed Brewerigg, and in consequence of this error it was impossible for me to find the work, in which the year 1484 is given, p. 2, but without any proof, as the time when quarantine was established.

Cronica di Verona, in Verona 1747. 4to iii. p. 93: Fede di sanita - - - - la quale precauzione non era mai stato per l'addietro praticata.

Abildgaards Beschreib. von Stevens-
Klint, 613

Abot de Bazinghen Traité des mon-
noies, 171

Account of the Royal Hospital for sea-
men at Greenwich, 490

Achilles Tatius, 492
Acta Eruditorum, 528

Sanctorum, 445