An account of the plague which raged at Moscow, in 1771

An Account of the Plague which Raged at Moscow, in 1771 is a sober medical-historical narrative of one of the eighteenth century's most devastating urban epidemics. Combining clinical observation, demographic detail, and civic chronicle, the work describes the plague's symptoms, transmission, mortality, and the public measures adopted amid panic, disorder, and institutional strain. Its style is empirical and restrained, characteristic of Enlightenment medical writing, yet it also belongs to the literature of catastrophe, where disease exposes the fragility of social order and administrative authority. Charles de Mertens was a physician whose professional formation and proximity to imperial Russian medical circles equipped him to record the Moscow outbreak with unusual precision. Writing in an age when contagion, quarantine, and public hygiene were fiercely debated, he sought not merely to memorialize disaster but to instruct governments and practitioners. His account reflects the practical concerns of a doctor attentive to bedside evidence, environmental conditions, and the consequences of policy. This book is recommended to readers interested in the history of medicine, epidemic governance, and eighteenth-century Russia. It offers a valuable primary perspective on plague before modern bacteriology, illuminating how observation, fear, and reform shaped responses to mass disease.