Besides, correct notions of contagion have
descended from remote antiquity, and were maintained unchanged in
the fourteenth century. So far back as the age of Plato a
knowledge of the contagious power of malignant inflammations of
the eye, of which also no physician of the Middle Ages entertained
a doubt, was general among the people; yet in modern times
surgeons have filled volumes with partial controversies on this
subject. The whole language of antiquity has adapted itself to
the notions of the people respecting the contagion of pestilential
diseases; and their terms were, beyond comparison, more expressive
than those in use among the moderns.
Arrangements for the protection of the healthy against contagious
diseases, the necessity of which is shown from these notions, were
regarded by the ancients as useful; and by man, whose
circumstances permitted it, were carried into effect in their
houses. Even a total separation of the sick from the healthy,
that indispensable means of protection against infection by
contact, was proposed by physicians of the second century after
Christ, in order to check the spreading of leprosy. But it was
decidedly opposed, because, as it was alleged, the healing art
ought not to be guilty of such harshness.
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