American citizen. [volume] (Canton, Miss.) 1864-1890, 1879-02-22
The Plague---Its Ravages at VIZ
riOuS Periods.

! III view Oh Ine POSSIBILITY Indt Europe
may soon be visited again by the scourge
which has wrought such sad havoc in
the past, it may not be uninteresting to
review briefly the history of previous
visitations, and to state the theories
which are entertained In regard to the
Transmission Of the disease. The his
tory of the plague dates back nearly as
far as we have historical records. In
767 B. c., according to Petavius, 1t
spread over the then known world. In 534
b. c. 1t made such havoc in Carthage
that the despairing population offered
up their children as sacrifices to the
gods to allay its fury. About century
later it ragged with great destructiveness
at Athens, and Thucydides has left us
graphic description Of Il. At the same
tins it extended over Egypt and Ethi-
opia. In the eighteenth year of our era
the plague swept off the population of
Greece at the rate of 10000 daily. Ia
the fourth century it ragged with violence
in Britain, and the mortality is reported
to have been so great that the living
! were scarcely able to bury
the dead. William of Malmsbury
wrote that in 772 an epidemic carried
off $4,000 persons in Chichester. In
1913, during an epidemic which pre-
vailed very generally throughout Eu-
rope, 200 persons persisted daily in Lon
don. In 1478 more persons died of pes
thence in England than had died in if
teen years of continued war. At various
other periods London has suffered ter
ribly from the scourge. In 1603-'4 more
than 20,000 persons persisted in London,
and in 1925 more than $1,000. But it
was in 1865 that what has passed into
history as ''the Great Plague" occurred.
Estimates of the deaths in London dur
ing that visitation fanse from 6s, 900 to
100000. John Evelyn's diary contains
some brief but very graphic memoranda
of its ravages. For example: 'sThere
perished this week of the plague in Lon
don 5000" "Came home, there per-
ishins nearly 10000 poor creatures
weekly" ITO London, and went
through the whole city. The shops
universally shut up, a dreadful pros
pect." This was the last visitation. of
the plague in England, but other .por
tions of Europe have suffered from it in
modern times, notably Marseilles in
1920, Moscow in 1771 and 1872, and the
Neapolitan States in 1915 andI1816 |
Its last appearance in Europeswas in
1874.
The disease derives its name from the |
Greek word signifying ga blow" 1t
Is an aggravated malignant fever, with
very varied symptoms and manifesto |
lions; and sometimes carries patient |
off within "a hours from the time of at
tack. A report which was made to the |
French Academy in 1916 arrives at four |
general conciusiens: First, that the |
countries where the plagus originates
are Egypt, Syria, and the two Turkeys,
but it is probable that it may be devel-
oped without Importation in the regen-
cies of Tripoli and Tunis and the En-
pire of Morocco; second, in those coun-
tries the conditions which favor its de-
velopment are the habitation of alluvial
or marshy grounds, hot, moist atmos-
phere, low, badly aired, and crowded
houses, the accumulation of a great
quantity of animal and vegetable mat
tiers in state of putrefaction, scanty
and unwholesome diet, great moral
and physical restitution, and the
of the laws of public and
private hygiene; third, sporadic plague
does not seem to be transmissible, but
epidemic plague is transnissible, both
in the localities where it is raging and
without them; fourth, it is transmitted
by means of miasmata given out by the
bodies of the sick-these miasmata in
close and ill-ventilated places, consti-
tuting centers of pestilential infection.
No rigorous observation has shown the
of the plague by simple
contact with the infected, but new ex-
periments are necessary to determine
that it is not transmissible by the goods
and wearing apparel of the infected.
The symptoms of the plague are SO
various and its nature is so imperfectly
that other diseases are fire.
quently mistaken for it, and, on the
other hand, the real plague, as in the
present case, is often at first treated
only as ordinary fever, until its rapid
spread and terrible mortality reveal its
true Characterization Journal.
A WHOEVER in Lawrence, Kansas,