had been generally noted for its freedom from plague (as compared
With Asiatic Turkey and the Levant).
A few cases of plague occurred in January 1877 at Baku on the west shore of the Caspian, in Russian territory.[1]
An outbreak of plague on European soil in 1878–1879 on the banks of the Volga caused a panic throughout Europe.[2] In the summer of 1877 a disease prevailed in several villages in the neighbourhood of Astrakhan and in the city itself, which was clearly a mild form of plague (pestis minor). It caused no deaths (or only one due to a complication) and died out apparently spontaneously. An official physician, Dr Kastorsky, who investigated the matter for the government, declared the disease to be identical with that prevailing in the same year at Resht in Persia; another physician, Dr Janizky, even gave it the name of pestis nostras. In October 1878 some cases appeared in the stanitza or Cossack military settlement of Vetlanka, 130 m. from Astrakhan on the right bank of the Volga, which seem to have puzzled the physicians who first observed them, but on the 30th of November were recognized as being but the same mild plague as had been observed the year before near Astrakhan by Dr Doppner, chief medical officer of the Cossacks of Astrakhan. His report on the epidemic is the only original one we have. At the end of November[3] the disease became suddenly more severe, and most of those attacked died; and from the 21st of December it became still more malignant, death occurring in some cases in a few hours, and without any buboes being formed. No case of recovery was known in this period. At the end of the year it rapidly declined, and in the first weeks of January still more so. The last death was on the 24th of January. In the second half of December, when the disease had already lasted two months, cases of plague occurred in several neighbouring villages, all of an extremely malignant type, so that in some places all who were attacked died. In most of these cases the disease began with persons who had been at Vetlanka, though this was not universally established. The inhabitants of these villages, terrified at the accounts from Vetlanka, strictly isolated the sick, and thus probably checked the spread of the disease. But it evidently suffered a spontaneous decline. By the end of January there were no cases left in the district except at one village (Selitrennoye), where the last occurred on the 9th of February. The total number of cases in Vetlanka, out of a population of about 1700, was 417, of whom 362 died. In the other villages there were about 62 deaths from plague, and not more than two or three cases of recovery. In consequence of the alarm excited by this appearance of plague upon European soil, most European governments sent special commissions to the spot. The British commissioners were Surgeon-Major Colvill and Dr J. F. Payne, who, like all the foreign commissioners, reached the spot when the epidemic was over. With respect to the origin of this epidemic, the possibility of its having originated on the spot, as in Resht and on the Euphrates in very similar situations, is not to be denied. An attempt was made to show that the contagion was brought home by Cossacks returning from the Turkish War, but on absolutely no evidence. In the opinion of Dr Payne the real beginning of the disease was in the year 1877, in the vicinity of Astrakhan, and the sudden development of the malignant out of a mild form of the disease was no more than had been observed in other places. The Astrakhan disease may have been imported from Resht or Baku, or may have been caused concurrently with the epidemics of these places by some cause affecting the basin of the Caspian generally. Plague in I ndia.-It used to be held as a maxim that plague never appeared east of the Indus; nevertheless it was observed during the 19th century in more than one distinct centre in India.. So long ago as 1815 the disease appeared in Guzerat, Kattywar and Cutch, “after three years of severe famine.” It reappeared early next year, in the same locality, when it extended to Sind as far as Hyderabad, and in another direction south-east as far as Ahmedabad and Dhollerah. But it disappeared from these parts in 1820 or early in 1821, and was not heard of again till July 1836, when a disease broke out into violence at the town of Pali in Marwar in Rajputana. It spread from Pali to the province of Meywar, but died out spontaneously in the hot season of 1837. The origin of these two epidemics was obscure. No importation from other countries could be traced.
In 1823 (though not officially known till later) an epidemic broke out at Kedarnath in Gurwhal, a sub-district of Kumaon on the south-west of the Himalayas, on a high situation. In 1834 and 1836 other epidemics occurred, which at last attracted the attention of government. In 1849–1850, and again in 1852, the disease raged very severely and spread southward. In 1853 Dr Francis and Dr Pearson were appointed a commission to inquire into the malady. In 1876–1877 another outbreak occurred. The symptoms of this disease, called maha murree or mahamari by the natives, were precisely those of oriental plague. The feature of blood-spitting, to which much importance had been attached, appeared to be not a common one. A very remarkable circumstance was the death of animals (rats, and more rarely snakes) at the outbreak of an epidemic. The rats brought up blood, and the body of one examined after death by Dr Francis showed an affection of the lungs.[4]
Oriental plague was observed in the Chinese province of Yunnan from 1871, and also at Pakhoi, a port in the Tongking Gulf, in 1882—being said to have prevailed there at least fifteen years. In both places the symptoms were the same, of undoubted bubonic plague. At Pakhoi it recurs nearly every year.[5]
In 1880 therefore plague existed or had existed within ten years, in the following parts of the world: (1) Benghazi, Africa; (2) Persian Kurdistan; (3) Irak, on the Tigris and Euphrates; (4) the Asir country, western Arabia; (5) on the lower Volga, Russia; (6) northern Persia and the shores of the Caspian; (7) Kumaon and Gurhwal, India; (8) Yunnan and Pakhoi, China.
Literature.—See the following works, besides those already quoted. Kamintus, Regimen contra epidimiam sive pestem, 4to, c. 1494 (many editions); Jacobus Soldus, Opus insigne de peste, 4to (Bologna, 1478), Alex. Benedictus, De observatione in pestilentia, 4to (Venice, 1493), Nicolaus Massa, De febre pestilentia, 4to (Venice, 1556, &c.); Fioravanti, Regimento della peste, 8vo, Venice, 1556; John Woodall, The Surgeon’s Mate, folio (London, 1639); an Helmont, Tumulus pestis, 8vo (Cologne, 1644, &c.); Muratori, Trattato del governo della peste, Modena, 1714; John Howard, An Account of Lazarettoes in Europe, &c., 4to London, 1789); Patrick Russel, A Treatise of the Plague, 4to London, 1791); Thomas Hancock, Researches into the Laws of Pestilence, 8vo (London, 1821); Foderé, Leçons sur les épidémies, &c., 4 vols. 8vo (Paris, 1822–1824); Ségur Dupeyron, Recherches historiques, &c., sur la peste (1837); Bulard, La Peste orientale, 8vo (Paris, 1839); Griesinger, Die Infectionskrankheiten (2nd ed., 8vo, Erlangen, 1864). (J. F. P.)
History since 1880.—The most striking feature of the early history of plague summarized above is the gradual retrocession of plague from the west, after a series of exceedingly destructive outbreaks extending over several centuries, and its eventual disappearance from Europe. It appears to have come to a sudden end in one country after another, and to have been seen there no more. Those lying most to the west were the first
- ↑ J. Netten Radcliffe, Reports; Tholozan, Histoire de la peste bubonique en Perse (Paris, 1874).
- ↑ See Radcliffe, Reports (1879–1880); Hirsch and Sommerbrodt, Pest-Epidemie 1878–1879 in Astrachan (Berlin, 1880); Zuber, La Peste d’Astrakhan en 1878–1879 (Paris, 1880); Colvill and Payne, Report to the Lord President of the Council (1879).
- ↑ The dates are all reduced to new style.
- ↑ On Indian plague, see Francis, Trans. Epidem. Soc. Lond. iv. 407–408; John Murray, ibid., vol. iv. part 2; J. N. Radcliffe, Reports of Local Government Board (1875, 1876, 1877 and for 1879–1880); Parliamentary Papers (1879); Frederick Forbes, On Plague in North-West Provinces of India (Edinburgh, 1840) (Dissertation); Hirsch, Handbuch der historischen-geogr. Pathologie, i. 209 (1860), (Eng. trans. by Creighton, London, 1883); Hecker’s Volkskrankheiten des Mittelalters (Berlin, 1865), p. 101; Webb, Pathologia indica (2nd ed., Calcutta, 1848).
- ↑ See J. N. Radcliffe’s Report for 1879–1880, p. 45; Manson in Reports of Imperial Chinese Customs, special series No. 2, for half-year ended the 31st of March 1878, 15th issue (Shanghai); Lowry, “Notes on Epidemic Disease at Pakhoi” (1882), ibid., 24th issue, p. 31.
