ALTHOUGH the Methods taken in other Countries, as well as in our own, have generally been different from what we have here recommended; yet there are not wanting some Instances of extraordinary Success attending these Measures, whenever they have happened to be put in Practice.
THE Magistrates of the City of _Ferrara_ in _Italy_ in the Year 1630, when all the Country round about them was infected with the _Plague_, observing the ill Success of the Conduct of their Neighbours, who, for Fear of losing their Commerce, did all they could to conceal the Disease, by keeping the Sick in their Houses, resolved, whenever occasion should require, to take a different Method. Accordingly, as soon as they received Information, that one had died in their City of the _Pestilence_, they immediately removed the whole Family he belonged to into a _Lazaretto_, where all, being seven in Number, likewise died. But though the Disease was thus malignant, it went no farther, being suppressed at once by this Method. Within the Space of a Year the same Case returned seven or eight Times, and this Management as often put a Stop to it. The Example of this _City_ was afterwards followed more than once by some other Towns in the same Territory with so good Success, that it was thought expedient, for the common Good, to publish in the _Memoirs_ of the People of _Ferrara_ this Declaration: _That the only Remedy against the Plague is to make the most early Discovery of it, that is possible, and thus to extinguish it in the very Beginning_[80].
NO less remarkable than this Occurrence at _Ferrara_, is what happened at _Rome_ in the _Plague_, I have taken Notice of before, in the Year 1657. When the Disease had spread itself among both Rich and Poor, and raged in the most violent Manner; the _Pope_ appointed Cardinal _Gastaldi_, to be Commissary General of Health, giving him for a Time the Power of the whole _Sacred College_, with full Commission to do whatever he should judge necessary. Hereupon he gave strict Orders, that no sick or suspected Persons should stay in their own Houses. The _Sick_ he removed, upon the first Notice, to a _Lazaretto_ in the _Island_ of the _Tyber_; and all who were in the same Houses with them to other _Hospitals_ just without the City, in order to be sent to the _Island_, if they should fall sick. At the same Time he took diligent Care to send away their _Goods_ to an airy Place to be cleansed. He executed these Regulations with so much Strictness, that no Persons of the highest Quality were exempted from this Treatment; which occasioned at first great Complaints against the _Cardinal_ for his Severity; but soon after he had general Thanks: for in two Months Time, by this means, he entirely cleared the City of the _Pestilence_, which had continued in it almost two Years. And it was particularly observed, that whereas before, when once the Disease had got into a House, it seldom ended without seizing the whole Family; in this Management scarce five out of an hundred of the sound Persons removed were infected[81].