generally regarded as having been transmitted from London, as it appeared mostly later than in the metropolis, and in many cases the importation by a particular person could be traced. Places near London were earliest aflected, as Brentford, Greenwich, Deptford; but in July or August 1665 it was already in Southampton, Sunderland, Newcastle, &c. A wider distribution occurred in the next year. Oxford entirely escaped, though the residence of the court and in constant communication with London. The exemption was attributed to cleanliness and good drainage.
After 1666 there was no epidemic of plague in London or any part of England, though sporadic cases appear in bills of mortality up to 1679; and a column filled up with “0” was left till 1703, when it finally disappeared. The disappearance of plague in London was attribute; to the Great Fire, but no such cause existed in other cities. It has also been ascribed to quarantine, but no effective quarantine was established till 1720, so that the cessation of plague in England must be regarded as spontaneous.
But this was no isolated fact. A similar cessation of plague was noted soon after in the greater part of western Europe. In 1666 a severe plague raged in Cologne and on the Rhine, which was prolonged till 1670 in the district. In the Netherlands there was plague in 1667–1663, but there are no definite notices of it after 1672. France saw the last plague epidemic in 1668, till it reappeared in 1720. In the years 1675–1684 a new plague epidemic appeared in North Africa, Turkey, Poland, Hungary, Austria and Germany, progressing generally northward. Malta lost 11,000 persons in 1675. The plague of Vienna in 1679 was very severe, causing 76,000 or probably more deaths. Prague in 1681 lost 83,000 by plague Dresden was affected in 1680, Magdeburg and Halle in 1682*lIl the latter town with a mortality of 4397 out of a population of about 10,000. Many North German cities suffered about the same time; but in 1683 the plague disappeared from Germany till the epidemic of 1707. In S ain it ceased about 1681; in Italy certain cities were attacked till the end of the century, but not later (Hirsch).
Plague in the 18th Century.—At the beginning of this period plague was very prevalent in Constantinople and along the Danube. n 1703 it caused great destruction in the Ukraine. In 1704 it began to spread through Poland, and later to Silesia, Lithuania, Prussia and a great part of Germany and Scandinavia. In Prussia and Lithuania 283,000 persons perished; Dantzig, Hamburg and other northern cities suffered severely. Copenhagen was attacked in 1710. In Stockholm there was a mortality of 40,000. Certain places near Brunswick (10° E.) marked the western limit of the epidemic; and cholera was arrested at the same spot in later years (Haser).
At the same time the plague soread westward from the Danube to Transylvania and Styria, and (1713) appeared in Austria and Bohemia, causing great mortality in Vienna. Thence it passed to Prague and Ratisbon-to the former, possibly to the latter, almost certainly conveyed by human intercourse. This city (12° E.) was the western limit reached in this year. Haser states that the plague disappeared everywhere in Europe after the great hurricane of the 27th of February 1714.
In 1717 plague raged severely in Constantinople; and in 1719 it made a fresh progress westward into Transylvania, Hungary, Galicia and Poland, but not farther (about 20° E.). It thus appears that each successive invasion had a more easterly western limit, and that the gradual narrowing of the range of plague, which began in the 17th century, was still going on.
This process suffered a temporary interruption by the outbreak of plague of southern France in 1720–1722. In 1720 Marseilles became ailected with an epidemic plague, the origin of which was attributed by some to contagion through the slnp of a Captain Chataud which arrived on the 20th of May 1720, from Syria, where plague at that time prevailed, though not epidemically when e sailed. Six of the crew had died on the voya e to Leghorn, but the disease was declared not to be plague. Cases of plague occurred, however, on the ship, and on the 22nd of June among porters unloading the cargo. Hence, according to believers in contagion, the disease passed to families in the “old town,” the poorest and unhealthiest quarter. In the meantime other ships ad arrived from Syria, which were ut in quarantine. According to others the plague arose in Marseilles from local causes; and recently discovered data show that suspicious cases of contagious disease occurred in the town before the arrival of Chataud’s ship[1] Opinions were divided, and the evidence appears even now nearly balanced, though the believers in contagion and importation gained the victory in public opinion. The pestilence was fearfully severe. Thousands of unburied corpses filled the streets, and in all 40,000 to 60,000 persons were carried off. In December 1721 the plague passed away, though isolated cases occurred in 1722 It passed to, or at least broke out in, Arles and Aix in 1720, causing great mortality, but in Toulon not till 1721, when it destroyed two-thirds of the population. The epidemic spread generally over Provence, but not to other parts of France, notwithstanding that, as confessed by D’Antrechaus, consul of Toulon, a believer in the exclusive power of contagion, there were abundant opportunities. The disease was in fact, as in other cases, self-limited. In all 87,659 persons are said to have died out of a population of nearly 250,000.[2]
This great epidemic caused a panic in England which led to the introduction (under Mead’s advice) of quarantine regulations, never previously enforced, and also led to the publication of many pamphlets, &c., beside Mead’s well-known Discourse on Pestilential Contagion (London, 1720).
Plague in Sicily in 1743.—An outbreak of plague at Messina in 1743 is important, not only for its fatality, but as one of the strongest cases in favour of the theory of imported contagion. Messina had been free from plague since 1624, and the Sicilians prided themselves on the rigour of the quarantine laws which were thought to have preserved them. In May 1743 a vessel arrived from Corfu, on board of which had occurred some suspicious deaths. The ship and cargo were burnt, but soon after cases of a suspicious form of disease were observed in the hospital and in the poorest parts of the town; and in the summer a fearful epidemic of plague developed itself which destroyed 40,000 or 50,000 persons, and then became extinct without spreading to other parts of Sicily.
Spread of Plague from the East.—Independent of the episodes of Marseilles and Messina, the spread of plague from the East continued to exhibit the above-mentioned law of limitation. In 1738–1744 the disease was in the Ukraine, Hungary, the borders of Carniola, Moravia and Austria, extending along the Carpathians as far as Poland (20° E.), and also in Bukowina (25° E.). It lasted till 1745, and then disappeared from those parts for fifteen years. In 1755–1757 plague prevailed in parts of European Turkey, whence it on one occasion extended into Transylvania, in the neighbourhood of Cronstadt, where it was checked (25.5° E.).[3]
In 1770 a destructive plague arose in Moldavia during the Russo-Turkish War, and shortly afterwards in Wallachia, apparently endemic in the former country at least. It affected also Transylvania and part of Hungary, and still more severely Poland, but was confined to Podolia, Volhynia, the Ukraine and east Galicia (5° E.), not even penetrating as far as Warsaw. After destroying, it is said, 300,000 persons, and without being checked by any quarantine regulations, the plague died out finally in March 1771, being remarkable for its short duration and spontaneous limitation (Haser).
In another direction the plague spread over Little Russia in 1770, and desolated Kieff, while in the next year it broke out in Moscow and produced one of the most destructive epidemics of modern times. More than 50,000 persons, nearly one-fourth of the population, were carried off.[4]
The remaining European plague-epidemics of the 18th century were inconsiderable, but on that very account noteworthy. Transylvania was again affected in 1785, Slavonia and Livonia (a district of eastern Galicia) in 1795–1796 (25° E.), Volhynia in 1798. The disease, while reappearing in the seats of the terrible earlier epidemics, was more limited in its range and of shorter duration.[5] An epidemic in Dalmatia in 1783–1784 is noteworthy in connexion with later outbreaks in the same region. In the last years of the century (1799–1800) there was a new epidemic in Syria and Egypt, where it affected the French and afterwards the English army.
Plague in the 19th Century.—Plague appeared at Constantinople in 1802–1803, about the same time in Armenia (Kars), and in 1801 in Bagdad. It had prevailed since 1798 in Georgia and the Caucasus, and in 1803–1806 began to spread from the north of the Caucasus into Russia, till in 1806 it was established at or near Astrakhan, and in 1807 reached Zareff, 200 m. higher up the Volga. These localities are interesting as being near those Where plague appeared in 1877–1878. It is also said to have entered the government of Saratov, but probably no great distanced.[6] The plague remained in the Caucasus and Georgia till 1819 at least. In 1828–1831 it was in Armenia, and again in 1840–1843, since which time it has not been heard of in that country.
- ↑ Relation historique de la pests de Marseille (Cologne, 1721, Paris, 1722, &c); Chicoyneau, Verny, &c., Observations et reflexions . . de la peste (Marseilles, 1721); Chicoyneau, Traité de la peste, Paris, 1744); Littré, article “Peste,” in Dictionnaire de médicine, xxiv. (Paris, 1841).
- ↑ D’Antrechaus, Relation de la peste de Toulon en 1721 (Paris, 1756); G. Lambert, Histoire de la peste de Toulon en 1721 (Toulon, 1861), quoted by Haser, Gesch. der epidem. Krankh.
- ↑ Adam Chenot, Abhandlung von der Pest (Dresden, 1776); De Peste (Vienna, 1766).
- ↑ Samoilowitz, Mémoire sur la peste en Russie, 1771 (Paris, 1783); Mertens, De la peste en 1771 (Paris, 1784)
- ↑ Lorinser, Pest des orients (Berlin, 1837) p. 103; Schraud, Pest in Syrmien, 1795 (2 vols, Pest, 1801).
- ↑ From the annals of the Moravian community of Sarepta on the Volga, Geschuhte der Bruder-Gememde Sarepta, by A. Glitsch (Sarepta and Berlin, 1865); also Tholozan, Epidémies de peste du Caucase (Paris, 1879).
