380
[CHAP. XII., PT. II.
[A very interesting little hook. The following quotations will serve to illustrate both
stylo and contents :—
(I)
We may, therefore, pass over the epidemics of 1092 in Kief, of 1188 in Norgorod and
some others, and come at once to the great outbreak of the middle of the fourteenth century—
the Black Death of 1348-52. In Russia this truly terrible visitation was no less destructive
than it was in the rest of Europe. It is curious to note that, while the Greek, Italian, and
other Western writers regard China or " Cathay " as the place of origin of this pesti-
lence, the Russian chroniclers state that it came from India. The infection seems to have
entered Russia by two routes—one from the South-East, through the Caucasus and up the
Volga, and a second and later one from the North-west, invading Pkof and Norgorod.
It spared neither high nor low, rich nor poor. In Moscow it caused the death to the
reigning Grand Prince (the title of Tsar was then unknown) and all his seven sons. The
great Russian historian, Karamsin, has devoted but a few paragraphs of his history of this
epidemic ; but it is easy to see that it was a disaster of no ordinary kind. That it has left
less impress upon the history of this nation than upon that of others may be due to the
condition of the country at the time. The ravages and slaughter which invariably followed
on a Tartar invasion left her scarce breathing time to notice the added horrors of the Black
Death. And yet a Giughiz Khan or a Tamerlane might have envied the death-dealing
powers of this pestilence, where they and their hordes, with all their thirst for blood, could
but slay a few thousands, the plague numbered its victims by millions. Small wonder it
is then that in a country so accustomed to wholesale slaughter by Tartar enemy from with-
out or by rival rulers from within, the additional mortality caused by the Black Death did
not effect those social or political transformations, which it has been shewn to have effected
in the more advanced and settled countries of the West.
(2)
Another serious outbreak of plague occurred in 1709. Peter the Great was then at
war with the Poles, and his troops were attacked by the pestilence somewhere near the
frontier of the two countries. His efforts to quell the disease were most energetic and
characteristic ; and some of his measures, it may be added, were strikingly in accordance with
modern practice. He caused the troops to be removed by sea from Marienburg to Revel.
There they were landed and scattered over as large an area of country as possible; divisions
were ordered to encamp so many miles apart, and regiments at least a verst (two-thirds of
a mile) from each other. Some of his other measures were less to bo commended. The
cordon system was enforced with the utmost severity. Death was the almost invariable
penalty for the least infringement of Peter's Plague Regulations. Gallows were
erected on the public highways, and no trial was accorded to the unfortunate victim
caught trying to break through the cordon ; he was hanged at once without benefit
of clergy. But then, as now, plague was not to be overcome by mere force, or to
be exterminated at the point of the bayonet, like a regiment of Swedes or Poles ; and the
hero of Paltava for once found himself in the presence of an enemy whom even he could
not subdue. In this epidemic it is stated that about a hundred thousand persons fell
victims to the plague ; and in the following year, when Peter was attacking the fortress
of Riga, over 60,000 persons are said to have died from the disease. It is interesting to
note that at that time, and also in the earlier epidemics, fumigation, which may be regarded
as the earliest form of disinfection, was freety employed. Letters, for example, which had
been brought by couriers from an infected district were passed through the smoke of a
fire, were then copied out three times, and only the third copy was delivered to the
addressee.
(69) Report on Plague in the Jullunder and Hoshiarpur Districts, 1897-98.
[Written by Major E. Inglis and other officers and published under the orders of the
Punjab Government. There was little plague in the Punjab during the period
dealt with, but evacuation was vigorously enforced, and is ably treated.]
(70) Mysore Plague Regulations.
(71) Mr. Haffkine, E. L. Marsh and Pitchford, Experiments and Special Reports on
Disinfection.
[See book No. (67).]
(72) Report of the Municipal Commissioner on the Plague in Bombay, 7898-90, Bombay,
1899