[Footnote 93: Mead proves that the plague is contagious from
Thucydides, Lacretius, Aristotle, Galen, and common
experience, (p. 10 - 20;) and he refutes (Preface, p. 2 -
13) the contrary opinion of the French physicians who
visited Marseilles in the year 1720. Yet these were the
recent and enlightened spectators of a plague which, in a
few months, swept away 50,000 inhabitants (sur le Peste de
Marseille, Paris, 1786) of a city that, in the present hour
of prosperity and trade contains no more then 90,000 souls,
(Necker, sur les Finances, tom. i. p. 231.)]