ABSTRACT
The year 1791 is one of the milestones in the history of quarantine in Britain. It produced no radical changes in procedure (except within the Privy Council), but it saw the publication of what Mullett has called two ‘encyclopedias of theory and practice’.1 These books were John Howard’s Account of the Principal Lazarettos in Europe and Patrick Russell’s Treatise of the Plague, which together brought quarantine issues to a new level of public awareness. Mullett considered that Howard ‘footnoted Russell’s arguments’, which in a way he did, as his work was a compendium of facts, but this tends to suggest that Howard’s book was later, whereas the first edition of the Account had appeared in 1789.2 Russell gave a handsome acknowledgement to Howard, who had died abroad in the previous year.3 It is possible that the later edition of Howard’s book, arranged by his executors, was inspired by the overlap with Russell’s.
