The Forest Republican. [volume] (Tionesta, Pa.) 1869-1952, 1881-05-25
THE BLACK DEATH.
Temperance of the Great PIngue Which
Devastated the Middle Ages.


Devastated the Middle Ages.
Already Europe is becoming alarmed
at the appearance of the plague, or
black death, in the East, and fears are
expressed that it may spread westward.
1t, therefore, becomes important to
know the character of the disease. The
London Standard states, on pathological
grounds, that it is a every malignant
form of contagious fever" which
breaks out suddenly in certain localities
and spreads with frightful rapidity, and
that the present "type" is as virulent
as that of the Middle Ages. It is char
acteristic by swellings of the lymphatic
glands and by carbuncles, and beyond
doubt one seizure seems to afford no Sc
curity against a second attack. This is,
however point upon which physicians
have not often had chance to study,
since " the pest" does not usually leave
the same individual chance of
experiencing its symptoms twice.
It has been contended that it
is not contagious, but in almost
every case of an outbreak the disease
has been traced to persons who have
come from infected districts. In the
Astrakhan epidemic of 1879, and in
that of 1771, which cut off 100000 peo-
pie in Moscow, the pestilence was
known to have been brought, in one
instance, from Central Asia, and in the
other from Choczin. Again, during
the latter outbreak, the 1,400 inmates
of the Imperial foundling hospital, who
were isolated, and in 1913 the town of
Jegla, in Malta, which was shut off
/ from Valetta, where the disease was
raging, entirely escaped. Quarantine,
however, as a preventive against the
ravages of the cholera, has been proved
to be utterly futile, and it is very gen.
orally allowed that it is not much more
potent as barrier against the plague.
| No other form of death has ever enlist
ed into its service historians of such
brilliant talent. De Foe could not
have been an eyewitness of the
horrible scenes of 1865 in London. But
he had doubtless talked to many who
had survived those dreadful times and
were familiar with the tales of the corpse
carrying wagon going its dismal rounds,
of the living being unable to carry out
the dead, and London deserted by the
court, and, indeed, all who could escape
into the country. In ''Rienzi" the late
Lord Lytton has given an account
scarcely less pictorial of the plague in
Florence, and in almost every other Eu-
ropean country the "pest" which crept
like foul miasma over Asia, Northern
Africa and Europe, from Naples to
Archangel and even to distant Green
land, where it smote the Esquimaux
by thousands, has secured such able
chroniclers that, at the slightest
sign of its temperance, Western
Europe naturally grows alarmed. In the
years 134S, 1861, 1868, 1869 and 1902
London was visited by the "black
DEATH" though those early attacks of
the disease sink into insignifcance
when compared with that which desc
lated the city in 1865, the year which
will ever be known as "the year of
the plague" In reality, however,
though it caused before Christmas a
mortality of SO, 596 out of the five hundred
thousand people which the metropolis
then contained, it did not abate till
1866, while in the thirteen subsequent
years there were many fatal cases
recorded. But after 1879 no death from
plague is know to have occurred, and
in 1704 so entirely had it disappeared
that the name of the disease was actually
omitted from the bills of mortality
Neto York Herald.