The Findlay Jeffersonian. [volume] (Findlay, Hancock County, Ohio) 1870-1881, 1876-11-17
AN UNWELCCME VISITOR.
Resppearanee of the Plague in Europe.

After an absence of thirty five years,
theplague is reported to have again ap
peared in Europe. The disease, it was
recently stated, has broEen out in Ser
via among the Turkish forces occupy
ing the line of the river Morava; and
it is suggested that the malady may
have been carried there by troops com
ing from the district lately infested
with the plague in Asiatic Turkey. 1t
is little likely that any such inpOrtar
ton will have occurred, for, in the first
place, no troops were moved from the
plague stricken district in Irak-Arabi
during the active prevalence of the
disease there this year; and, in the sec
ond place, it is scarcely conceivable
that the plague could have been car
ried by slowly moving troops from the
lower Euphrates and Tigris into Seryia
without indications of its presence
among them, and is spread to com
munities on the road Plague has not
yet certainly shown itself in the Asiatie
dominions of Turkey North of Bagdad,
ON the Tigris, and of Azizie, on the
Euphrates, both places some 1900
miles distant, as the crow flies, from
the Turkish camps on the Morava.
1t is notimpossible, however, though
improbable, that in Servia, as in other
old baunts of plague in recent years,
the disease may have appeared after a
period of cessation. This is what hap
pened of late years in the district of
Benghazi, North Africa, in Persian
Kurdistan. in the Assyr district, West
ern Arabia, and in Mesopotamia- Dur
ing the gradual declension of the
plague in Europe, which, beginning
after the great outbreak in this eoun-
try in 1865. continued until what was
believed to be the entire cessation of
the disease ia 1s41, the malady prob
ably fingered longest in Servia and
Bulgaria. 1t was in Bulgaria that the
last great European outbreak of plague
occurred in 1888 9, when from so, 600 to
80, 600 of the population were distroy-
ed by the disease. 1t may be, there
fore, that In one of the later haunts Of
plague in Europe. as in some of its
former haunts in Africa and Asia, the
disease has again shown itself. But
this conclusion il not to be accepted
without very precise evidence. There
are peculiar liabilities to error in form
ing Judgment as to the existence of
plague on the Lower Danube and its
tributaries. There on the bottom lands,
malarial fevers, often of the severest
type, have home It has happened
that Russian and Turkish armies cam
paigning along the Danube have been
terribly scourged by diseases. Before
the cessation of the plague in Europe
il was often a matter of doubt with
medical stats of armies IN the field on
the line of the Danube whether they
we're dealing with malarial fever or
with plague.
Although the active prevalence of
plague has ceased in Bagdad and the
infected district South of the city since
the beginning of July. cases of the
disease still occur from time 20 time.
Moreover, there has been an outbreak
of plague at Shuster, in Southwestern
Persia. Plague has also been reported
in Persian Kurdistan, but there is
reason TO believe that the disease which
was here designated plague was, In re-
ality, small poL