But however this
destructive epidemy originated, its leading features were novel,
and its consequences more dreadful than the common plague of
Turkey, or that of Syria, or Egypt. Let every one freely declare
his own sentiments about it; let him assign any credible account of
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 of its dreadful
effects, and having seen and visited many who were afflicted, and
who were dying with it.

[Footnote 128: See the Author's observations, in a letter to
Mr. Willis, in Gentleman's Magazine, February, 1805.]

In the month of April, 1799, a dreadful plague, of a most
destructive nature, manifested itself in the city of Old Fas, 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
of the aggregate population, continuing _with unabating violence_,
ten, fifteen, or twenty days; being of longer duration in old than
in new towns; then diminishing in a progressive proportion from one
168 thousand a day to nine hundred, then to eight hundred, and so on
until it disappeared. Whatever recourse was had to medicine and to
physicians was unavailing; so that such expedients were at length
totally relinquished, and the people, overpowered by this terrible
scourge, lost all hopes of surviving it.

Whilst it raged in the town of Mogodor, a small village, _Diabet_,
situated about two miles south-east of that place, remained
uninfected, although the communication was open between them: on
the _thirty-fourth day_, however, after its first appearance at
Mogodor, this village 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 of one hundred and thirty-three,
the original population of the village, before the plague visited
it; none died after this, and those who were infected, recovered in
the course of a month or two, some losing an eye, or the use