The true northerner. [volume] (Paw Paw, Mich.) 1855-1920, 1879-02-21

Ships freighted with putrefying bodies
drifted aimlessly and hideously on the
Mediterranean, Black and North seas
not human creature alive anywhere
and spread contagion on the shores
whittier the winds and tides had driven
them. Hope, peace, content, law, CT
der, affection, naturalness, humanity
seemed never to have been. Ancient
custom and the need of companionship
were for the time obliterated; all was
death, agony and despair, and by these
the infected world appeared to be ex-
clusively and shudderingly possessed.
The moral effects of the plague were
not less dreadful than its physical de-
struction. Thousands persisted from
fear, which dissolved among the living
all ties of kindred, all bonds of fellow
ship, all links of sympathy. Children
fed from their polluted parents; moth
ers deserted their helpless infants; hus-
bands and lovers left their wives and
mattresses to die bowling and alone.
Terror generated superstition; the vir-
tuous and vicious alike made distracting
and distracted appeals to God who,
they imagined, had sent the pestilence
to punish them for manifold sins
Crowds rushed to sacrifice their worldly
goods to the church; fanaticism swelled
on every hand; women screamed to
Heaven for mercy men tore out their
hair and scourged themselves until
they had tainted from loss of blood, that
they might propitiate deity whom they
actually believed they had enraged The
world was mad with fright, suffering, and
superstition, and thousands VINO had
tried to stay the pestilence with prayer
declared that God was dead and hell
had begun on earth.
The horrors of the time were fur
Their heightened by cruel prosecutions
against the Jews, who had been accused
of poisoning the public wells, this being
in popular belief the cause of the pesti-
lence. The people rose in mad fury to
exterminate the unfortunate Hebrew
race, and slaughter them by tens of
thousands. In the uncomfortable city
of Mentz Germany alono, near 1900
fell victims to the public wrath. They
were killed with steel and club, hanged,
drowned, burned, and often barbarously
put to death by every kind of torture.
In numberless instances they took their
own lives in masses to avoid cruelties of
the mob, and in many communities
every man, woman, and child was sacri-
feed to insensate rage. To aggravate
the scourge, the panic about poison
caused the wells to be closed. The
people were afraid to touch water, and
those who escaped the plague persisted
of thirst and terror. Society, rude at
best in that day. was totally disorgan-
lied, and suoh means as might have
been adopted to prevent or mitigate the
stupendous evil were either neglected
or unthought of, in the arrangement
and frenzy that possessed everybody,
from the highest to the lowest. The
influence of the plague and its desc
lation were so overwhelming that it fire.
quently destroyed all honesty and prin-
ciple among its survivors. Many were
rendered callous, and many took advan-
tage of the universal horror to indulge
their worst passions, to plumber, murder,
and perpetrate the most revolving crimes.
The plague has again and again Wis
tied Western Europe since the four
teenth century, but never has it been
so baleful as then, continued so long, or
been attended with such incidental hor-
rors. Previous to its last outbreak, in
1865, it invaded England, according to
the celebrated physician, Sydenham,
every thirty or forty years. Although
its symptoms and virulence have varied
at different times, its general features
have been sufficiently alike to prove
that it is always the same terrible dis
ease. Great difference of opinion still
exists as to its cause. Some authorities
maintain that it is exclusively propa-
gated by peculiar contagion; others
contend, while admitting its contagious
ness, that it may also be engendered
spontaneously by endemic or epidemic
Influences; others again deny its con-
tagiousness altogether, and assert that
it arises from local or epidemic causes.
Intelligent opinion favors the second of
these views, and there is mass of
sound evidence to sustain it. What
ever the cause, temperance seems to
affect it favorably. In the tropics it is
unknown, and the cold of northern
climates has been observed to check its
ravages. In Europe it has been most
fatal during summer and autumn, es-
pecially in September. Thus, in Lon
don, in 1866, the deaths from the pesti
fence were, in June, 500; in July, 4, 129;
in August, 20,046; in September, o.
230; in October, 14,373; in November,
3,449; while in December they fell be-
low LOCO. The precise nature of the
distemper is still unknown. A poison
whose properties evade all chemical and
microscopic detection is absorbed into
the system, and alters at once, or after
a brief Period of incubation, the quail
ity of the blood and the condition of
the tissues.
The plague in Russia. this year, has
come, as before, from Turkey, bu; the
Russian authorities seem at present
most active and energetic in measures
to prevent its spread. Still, SO dread
full is the pest, so inconceivable are its
horrors to those who have not witnessed
them, that it is net strange Austria,
Germany and other countries of Europe
should be alarmed. While it is unlike
ly to make much advance toward the
West, too great caution cannot be ex-
ercised; and, whatever may happen, we
have the comfort Of knowing that in