Mineral Point tribune. (Mineral Point, Wis.) 1869-1938, 1876-05-03

tnc pIdg uc, IL SCCuiS CicdT, is once
more threatening the confines OF Europe
Since the beginning OF March it has
reached Bagdad, in which city in 1881 il
destroyed 10000 out of 10000 people,
The new outbreak, however, shows much
of the old and mysterious fierceness he.
fore which medical science for many CEN
turtles recoiled in despair. There is no
reason TO expect that its ravages will be
Asia. Both in Egypt and in European
plague breeds and spreads are still pre.
vailing. Happily there is not the least
ground for believing that the conditions
for its reproduction in Western Eurepe
any longer exist. Thus we have hardly
more than scientific interest in the
movement of a distant, but most deadly
enemy There is not much more chance
of an invasion of England by the plague
than there is Of the destruction of Lon
don by an earthquake like that Of Lis.
bon. No calamity, however, in the his
tory of the human race has produced SO
crushing an effect upon the imagination
as the great epidemic of the plague In
one week 7,165 persons were killed by
the pestilence in London. and the entire
number of deaths in the year within the
bills of mortality reached the enormous
total Of $4,000 out of population of
100000. Since that time no general visi-
tation Of the plague has been known in
England or in the neigbboring countries
Of Western Europe. Yet in 1912 it at
tackled Copenhagen; in 1920 Marseiles,
where it slew more than half the inhaDi-
tants; in I'LL Moscow; in 1913 Malta;
in 1916 Calabria in 1918 Corfu and in
1919 there was an outbreak in Silesia.
These are the chief known instances Of
the appearance of the plague in modern
times outside the dominions Of Turkey
and Egypt. 1t appears, therefore, that
as modern life has been civilized, and,
above all, has been cleansed, the power
of the plague over the human organiza
ton HAS been steadily lessened.
The plague itself is malignant fever
analogous to typhus, with a peculiar in
fluence over the Emphatic system. The
persons subject to this sort of distemper
! are weakly in constitution, dwelling in the
midst Of damp and dirt, and generally of
gross habits of living. When the true
plague, stirred in its ancient source and
seminary" to quote Gibbons phrase, in
the Egyptian or Syrian cities, by some
such accident as an unhealthy season, ex-
tends its infection, it fixes itself where a
population shown to be prepared for its
reception by the prevalence of the lesser
diseases already mentioned is gathered to-
gether. On the whole 1t may be said that
in no Western cities do such tavoring con.
ditiOns invite its visits Though much
remains to be done in our own and neigh
boring countries by way of sanitary i'm
provement, what has peen done, if we
con pare the life of our contemporaries
with that of our ancestors of two centuries
| ago, marks surprising advance. The
worst rookery in modern London could
not, as "A nursery for the propagation of
the pestilence, be matched with the chief
cities of the East Moreover, the col
lapse OF the nervous powers which is the
especial characteristic of this frightful
malady, is favored by terror and helpless
ness, and an active minded modern COM
munity, which, in the worst event, would
theoretically combat even the plague with
all the resources of medical science, could
no more be reduced to the despair of the
Oriental when he finds himself face to
face with the contagion than it could be
| terrified, as the people of London were in
1868, by the ominous flaming of an unex-
pected comet in the sky Thus in modern
England indeed, throughout Western
Europe generally-neither the material
nor the moral conditions exist which in
vitc the inroads of the plague. London
! Times