Infectious diseases

**Right sensor activated**

(THE DISTANT OCEAN. AN EERIE BIRD CALL)

WORKING-CLASS MIDDLE-AGED ENGLISHMAN: No contagion is more difficultly guarded against than this. Persons of no sex or age are secure from it till they have once had it, this disease being so universal.

OLDER ENGLISHMAN: The pustules on the face first and then on the whole body being white begin, from the first attack, to turn yellow and then brown or sometimes black, and at last to dry into scabs.

(CALL TO PRAYER - SINGING)

EDUCATED ENGLISH WOMAN: The smallpox so fatal and so general amongst us is here entirely harmless by the invention of engrafting, which is the term they give it. There's a set of old women who make it their business to perform the operation every autumn. The old woman comes with a nutshell full of the matter of the best sort of smallpox and asks what vein you pleased to have opened.

(GENTLE CLINKING OF CHINA)

OLDER ENGLISHMAN: The custom of transferring the smallpox seems not to be a modern invention. The Chinese have long had a method of conveying this disease by dipping a little pledgit of cotton in the variolas matter taken fresh out of the pustules and putting it up the nostrils. A practice something like inoculation has been long used in Wales, which they call ‘buying the smallpox’, but the method which was practised here was brought from Turkey. How these people became acquainted with the practice is impossible to determine. It has been in use among them time immemorial.

(CHILDREN PLAYING)

ANOTHER MIDDLE-AGED ENGLISHMAN: The progress of vaccination in this town and neighbourhood has been beyond expectation during the last 12 months. I feel not a little elevated in being able to say that not one of these have taken the smallpox, although it has been raging in every part of this town and neighbourhood for 15 months past, the vaccinated children having stood amidst the general wreck untouched and uninjured.

(WAVES BREAK ON THE SHORE. DISTANT BIRD CALLS)

EDUCATED OLDER ENGLISHMAN: In the year 1789, they were visited by a disorder which raged among them with all the appearance and virulence of the smallpox. The number that it swept off by their own accounts was incredible. At that time a native was living with us, and on our taking him down to the harbour to look for his former companions, those who witnessed his expression and agony can never forget either. He looked anxiously around him in the different coves we visited. Not a vestige on the sand was to be found of human foot. The excavations in the rocks were filled with the putrid bodies of those who had fallen victims to the disorder. Not a living person was anywhere to be met with. It seemed as if, flying from the contagion, they had left the dead to bury the dead. He lifted up his hands and eyes in silent agony for some time. At last he exclaimed, “All dead, all dead,” and then hung his head in mournful silence, which he preserved during the remainder of our excursion. Bennelong told us that his friend Colebee’s tribe, being reduced by its effects to three persons - Colebee, the boy, Nanbarry, and someone else - they found themselves compelled to unite with some other tribe, not only for their personal protection but to prevent the extinction of their tribe. Whether this incorporation ever took place, I cannot say.

(EERIE BIRD CALLS. DEEP RUMBLING. WAVES LAP THE SHORE)

WELL-SPOKEN YOUNG ENGLISHMAN: I am instructed by the Bengal Medical Board to transmit to your address supplies of vaccine virus by the ship Eliza, Captain Murray, in the hope of reintroducing the vaccine at New South Wales.

(CREAKING TIMBER. WAVES LAP THE SHORE. SEAGULLS SQUAWK)

YOUNG ENGLISHMAN: Thursday, March 14, 1861: All of us ordered into quarantine on shore and to take with us all the soiled clothes and bedding we'd used on the voyage out and have them fumigated. Tuesday, got vaccinated, which is, I suppose, a good thing.

(WAVES LAP THE SHORE. MAGPIES SING)

**END**

 

**Left sensor activated**

(CROWD NOISE. HOWLING)

(LOW RUMBLING)

MIDDLE-AGED ENGLISHMAN: The effects of these eclipses will presage sickness and such diseases as will prove contagious and, for the most part, mortal.

YOUNG ENGLISH WOMAN: Lord have mercy on our souls.

(BELL TOLL)

OLDER ENGLISHMAN: You shall have a care that your houses be kept clean and sweet, not suffering any foul and filthy clothes or stinking things to remain.

(SCRUBBING, WATER SPLASHES ON THE GROUND)

THIRTY-ISH ENGLISHMAN: Of prohibiting persons and goods coming from foreign countries and places infected to be landed for 40 days is most rational for preventing the bringing in of the contagion. None might travel without certificates of health.

(WAVES CRASH, BANGING AND A BELL RINGS ONCE. A DOOR CLOSES)

(RAPID DOOR KNOCK, A DOG BARKS IN THE DISTANCE)

MIDDLE-AGED WORKING-CLASS ENGLISH WOMAN: Directions for the searchers. They are to take notice whether there be any swellings, risings or botch under the ear, about the neck, or either side, or under the armpits of either side, or the groins, and of its hardness and whether broken or unbroken. The house that is known to be infected, though none be dead therein, to be shut up and carefully kept watch till a time after the party be well recovered.

(DOG BARKS. DOOR SLAMS SHUT. LOUD HAMMERING)

EDUCATED MIDDLE-AGED ENGLISHMAN: Pull off the feathers from the tails of living cocks, hens, pigeons or chickens and, holding their bills, hold them hard to the botch or swelling and so keep them at that part until they die and, by this means, draw out the poison.

(CLUCKING CHICKENS. BELL TOLLS SLOWLY. FOOTSTEPS ON COBBLESTONES)

THIRTY-ISH ENGLISHMAN: Prayers to be used on all Sundays, Wednesdays and Fridays during the continuance of our danger from the plague: Teach us to number our days that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom. Make us duly to consider how short our time is, oh, Lord. Fortify our minds against the fear of death. Grant that we may not be terrified and to give up our souls into thy hands.

**END**