Holmes County farmer. [volume] (Millersburg, Ohio) 1857-1926, 1865-05-04
The Possible Great Plague.

Collector Draper has very promptly and
properly issued an order for the inspection
of all vessels arriving in this harbor from
Ports at which the Russian plague is nowra-
ging. And it is to be hoped that our city
government will hcstir itself in time to pre-
pare the metropolis, so far as practicable
sanitary measures can prepare 1t, against
possible, we hardly care TO say probable,
advent Of an enemy far more terrible than
an army with banners
The latest visitations of the Cholera in
this country, severe as they, were, afford
but very feeble measure of the ravagcs
which would now be pretty surely wrought
by any great epidemic among us. In New
York, particularly, our population has not
only swelled far beyond its numbers of
twenty years ago. but it is on the whole
worse lodged than it then was, and exists
under conditions more favorable to the
spread of such disease as the Russian
plague appears to be.
The tenement.house which, twenty years
ago, played an insignificant part in the city's
panorama, now hives world of human be-
ings SO huddled and crowded together as
to make them the natural prey of disease.
But, concurrentlv with this purely local
danger, we are called to consider more
general and much more formidable one in
the moral and mental condition of the times.
The researches of modern medicinal sci
ence into the origin and history of the
great pestilcnce of the middle ages conclu-
sively prove that as the imagination has
very serious share in the production of dis.
ease in individual cases, SO the condition OF
what we may call the collective moral enti-
ty of society materially determines the pro-
duction and diffusion of epidamic disorders.
The dancing plaques" of the thirteenth
and fourteenth centuries, in Europe, thus
supervened upon the complete prostraton
of particular regions by war an famine, and
convulsions Of nature. These strange dis
orders were propagated as upon the beams
of the light and the wings of the wind, and
convulsed the bodies of men through the
morbid excitement of their minds and their
nervous systems.
The terrible BLACK Death which five
centuries ago swept over Christendom, de-
stroying in some countries as in Italy and
England, nearly one-half the population,
followed the most extraordinary cosmical
commissions of which we have any record.
Destructive earthquakes, floods, and fam.
ines, had succeeded each other for several
years consccutively, and had filed the con
tinent with want misery and despair. The
, minds of men had been over-wrought and
fevered until the whole moral atmosphere
was prepared for the reception of the fell
disease, which, coming from China and 81
IBERIA, made its first foci insCR stantinople
and Greece, and thence Travelled through
Italy, Spain, France, Germany, England,
and Scandinavia, culminoting in Russia
three years after its first appearance in Con
stantinople.
The disease which is now working so
much havoc in Russia, and which has al
in Re
the frontiers of Germany, seems to have
many anaogies with this frightful "Black
Death" Of the fourteenth century, and to
have been imported like that from the
steppes of Mongolia That the ''Black
Death was conveyed by contagion we
know but we know also that contagion was
but one of the causes and means of its pro-
pagation. 1T was a consequence, says
the abest German historian, Of the malady,
: "of violent connections in the earth's or
"ganism, if any disease Of cosmical origin
'can beso considered One spring set a
Thousand others in motion for the annihila-
'tion Of living beings. The most powerful
'of all was contagion; but in the most dis
''tant countries, which had scarcely yet
"heard the echo of the first concu ssion, the
''people fell a sacrifice to organic p olson, the
'untimely offspring of vital energies thrown
Into violent commotlon.
1t is noticeable circumstance, in this
, connection, that the increacing frequency OF
earthquakes and other phenomena of cos
mical agitation has attracted the attention of
the scientific world during the past five
, years, and has given rise to great deal OF
. varied speculation as to its causes and con-
: sequences.
So far as we in America are concerned,
: there can be no question that the agitation
10, Of g min tba ON.
n eral nervous and moral ''exaltation' of the
a country in consequence Of the tremendous
events of the past four years. must be re-
garded as dangerously predisposing US to
extraordinary epidemics
The fearful sweating sickness of 1886
% we are told, ''made its appearance not with
''out great and general premisory events
Is (which, for series Of years, impaired tC
1t ''the people Of England susceptibility tc
n dangerous and unusurl diseases. If We
''take into account the general depression
le ''of the popular mind i'll consequence o
n ''the sanguinary civil wars of the red anC
Is white roses, we may readily conceive that
r ''it would require but a very slight impulse
"to excite Il powerful commotion in the
S ''mysterous mechanism the human body
to ''Event under ordinary circumstances wars
to ''beget pestilential disorders; how mucl
rs ''more inevitably must these not have arisel
- Sin the then state of affairs.
lg The wasted and desolate condition of ;
to large part of our country is also a circum
Ill stance sure to tell formidably against us il
:. the case Of positive epidemic sweeping
over the continent; and it is so plain, indeed
le that if the plague is really to visit the ney
us world, its ravages must be reasonably ex
w pected to be inconceivably severe, that i
will be the extreme of rocklessness in ou
d; authorities, and all who are charged will
nd the protection of the public health, not II
IS, take every possible protection, not agains
no its advent alone, but by way Of mitigating
lg its power for evil if come it must.
lis ---s.----------------
Ill IL the Cholera Coming
en- uu . -, r. u N