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seldom spread, and are never so fatal, as such as come from abroad.
Many are of opinion, that the heat kills the plague, as they term it, which is owing to a foolish superstition among the Greeks, who pretend, that it must cease the 24th of June, being St. John's day, tho' they may observe the contrary happen every year; and the strongest plague, that was at Smyrna in my time, anno 1736, was hottest about that time, and continued with great violence till the latter end of September, when it began to abate; but was not entirely over till the 12th of November, when Te Deum was sung in the Capuchins convent.
This mistaken notion may be in some measure owing to a wrong sense put upon Prosper Alpinus, who allows that the plague at Cairo begins to cease in the months of June and July, when the strong Northerly winds (called Embats or Etesian winds) begin to blow, which make the country much cooler than in the months of May, April, and March, when the plague rages most; which he very justly imputes to the great suffocating heats and Southerly winds, which reign during those months in that country: and it is then, that the ships, which load rice, flax, and other goods and merchandise for Constantinople receive the infection, and carry it with them hither; and, upon these goods being delivered to persons in different parts of the city, the plague breaks out at once with rest violence among the trading people of the Greeks, Armenians, and Jews; for I have observed, both here and at Smyrna, that the Turks are commonly the last of the four nations, who are infected; but when the plague gets once among them, they suf-fer
