Note 180 — OF QUARANTINE, LAZARETTOS, AND OTHER ESTABLISHMENTS OF PLAGUE POLICE.

It is noticed by writers long before Dr. Maclean: see “Distinct notions of the Plague, 1722. Dale Ingram on the Plagues that have appeared since 1346; and Plague no Contagious Disease.” The following is the story to which these authors allude.—It appears that Pope Paul III, about the year 1747, commissioned his legate, Cardinal Montè, to fabricate some pretext for removing the celebrated Council of Trent, which was then sitting in debate on the abuses of the ecclesiastical power, to some town within the Papal territory. An epidemic fever, it was said, then prevailed at Trent: many of the bishops became alarmed, and fled; some, if not all, on the Emperor’s side, raised their voices against the plot; but Fracastorius, Physician of the Council, aided the imposition with all the zeal of a devoted Catholic, and the Council was accordingly translated to Bologna. From this time, Dr. Maclean asserts, it became almost heretical to doubt of the contagious nature of Plague; and the error, chiefly because it was sanctioned by the sovereign Pontiff’s authority in the first instance, has been propagated in christendom, as a point of medical orthodoxy, and continued down to the present time.—Maclean, loco citato,—Hancock on Pestilence, p. 11.