Towanda daily review. [volume] (Towanda, Pa.) 1879-1921, 1881-05-02
The Black Death.


death, in the East, and fears are express
ed that it may spread westward 1t
therefore becomes important to know the
characteristics of the disease. The Lon
don Standard states, on pathological
ground, that it is a every malignant form
of contagious fever" which breaks, out
suddenly in certain localities and spreads
with frightful velocity, and that the pres
ent "tpye" is as virulent as that of the
Middle Ages. 1t is characterised by
swellings of the Emphatic glands and
carbuncles and beyond doubt one seizure
seems to afford no security against a sec
ond attack. This is, however, a point
upon which physicians have not often
had chance Of studying, since''the pest"
does not usually leave the same individu-
al chance of experience its symptoms
twice. 1t has been contended that it is
not contagious, but in almost every case
of an outbreak the disease has been trac-
ed to persons who have come from infect
ed districts. In the Astrakhan epidemic
of 1879, and in that of l771, which cut off
100000 people in Moscow, the pestilence
was known TO have been brought, in one
instance, from Central Asia, and in the
other from Choezin. Again during the
latter outbreak, the l, 400 inmates of the
Imperial Founding hospital, who were
isolated, and in 1918 the town OF Jegia,
in Malta, which was shut off from Valet
ia, where the disease was raging, entire
ly escaped. Quarantine, however, as a
preventive against the ravages of the
cholera has been proved to be utterly fu-
tile, and it is very generally, allowed that
it is not much more potent as a barrier
against the plague. No other form of
death has ever enlisted into it's 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,
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" Lord Lytton has
given an account scarcely less pictorial
Of the plague in Florence, and in almost
every other European country '.the pest"
which crept like a foul miasma over
Asia, Northern Africa and Europe, from
Naples to Archangle, and even to distant
Greenland, where it smote the Esqui-
maux by thousands, has secured such
able chroniclers that, at the slightest
sign of its reappearancc, Western Europe
naturally grows alarmed, In the years
l34S, 1861, 1868, 1869 and 1905, London
was visited by the ''black DEATH" though
these early ATTACKS of disease sink into
snsignificancc when compared with that
which desolated the city in 1865, the wear
which will ever be Known as ''the year of
the plague In reality, however, though
1T caused before Christmas Il mortality of
GS, 500 out of 500, 900 people which the
metropolis then contained, it did not
sabate until 1866, while in the thirteen
subsequent years there were many fatal
cases recorded But after 1879 no death
from plague is known to have occurred 4,
and in 1904 SO entirely had it disappeared
that the name of the disease was actually
omitted from the bills of mortality.