Southern Christian Advocate

THE PLAGUE IN SMYRNA.

Extract of a letter from Rev. J. B. Adger, to his father, in this city, dated Smyrna, July 18, 1837.

The plague has raged more severely this season than for many years past; but it is now almost entirely over, and we hope in a few days to come out of our quarantine. In this village (Bousat, a few miles out of Smyrna,) some four or five deaths have taken place; by the blessing of God upon the rigid quarantine which the authorities wisely imposed upon every thing coming from Smyrna. The four or five cases were all poor people, who took no care to avoid exposure. But in Smyrna, for a long time, from one hundred to three hundred died daily. The very large majority of these were Turks, who never keep quarantine; but make it a religious duty to attend the funerals of their deceased friends in companies, each one taking his turn in carrying the bier. I frequently met them, as I rode into the city in the morning, coming out to their burial ground with the dead, and they never exhibited any fears. Many days, it was supposed that not less than two hundred of these deluded fatalists fell victims. Of the Greeks, there were frequently twenty or twenty-five daily attacked. Of the Armenians, who were much fewer, perhaps not more than twelve any day. Of the Jews, between twenty and thirty. Of the Catholics, four or five daily. Of the Protestants, through God's mercy, I believe not one has died or been attacked during the whole season.

Our Missionary friends at Constantinople, have not been so much favored in this respect as we. Mr. Dwight has lost one child and his wife by this terrible disease, and he is now, together with his other three children, daily liable to an attack of the same. Indeed all the Missionaries at C. are fully "compromised," that is to say, they had visited Mrs. Dwight, and handled articles belonging to the family during several days of Mrs. Dwight's illness, before it was known that her disease was plague. Mr. Dwight himself, nursed his wife and child and buried them both; so that we are very anxious about him; but he is in the hands of God, and he will order the event in precisely the right way.

We are all practised believers in the contagiousness of the plague, and there is at present here a French Physician, named Bulard, who has been several weeks past in the plague hospital, and who also spent some months in a like situation in Egypt. He has handled the sick and their clothes, and also has dissected all who have died during his stay; and he has no doubt of its full contagiousness, and of the usefulness of quarantine. He has published in our Smyrna French Journal a number of valuable communications on the subject, but has no hesitation in admitting that he is totally at a loss concerning this singular disease. He is unable to prescribe any thing which cures. All who get well seem to owe their recovery, not to any medicine, but entirely to nature, that is to God's mercy.

Charleston Observer.