THE ORIENTAL PLAGUE--QUESTION OF CONTAGION.
A very few years ago it was the general opinion, even of the best
informed, that epidemic diseases originate in atmospheric influences
over which man has no control. A reservation seems, however, to have
been made in respect of the Oriental, or as some term it, the African,
plague, a malady the most frightful to which man is liable. Writers of
the highest order traced to a damp, hot, and stagnating air, generated
from the putrefaction of animal substances, and especially from the
swarms of locusts, not less destructive to mankind in their death than
in their lives, the fatal disease which depopulated the earth in the
time of Justinian and his successors. The disease was reported to have
first appeared in the neighbourhood of Pelusium, between the Serbonian
bog and the eastern channel of the Nile. Thence tracing a double path
it spread to the east, over Syria, Persia, and India, and penetrated
to the west, along the coast of Africa, and thence to the continent
of Europe. But in order to explain how it spread, it was necessary
to invent another theory and add it to the first; the disease once
generated, was said to spread by contagion. It is related in “The
Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,”[11] that in the spring of the
second year (after its first appearance), Constantinople, during three
or four months, was visited by the pestilence. It did not reach the
capital of the empire at once, but travelled slowly and irregularly,
after the manner of modern cholera. In the admirable descriptions of
the immortal historian, we can trace all the symptoms of the true
Oriental plague, identical in its phenomena and effects with the
sufficiently numerous visitations which have since occurred, and with
that no doubt which, lately originating at Bengazzi, and spreading to
Tripoli, once more threatens the European family of nations. In a damp,
hot, stagnating air, observes the historian, who in his account follows
Procopius, this African fever is generated from the putrefaction of
animal substances, and especially from the swarms of locusts, “not
less destructive to mankind in their death than in their lives.” But
the ferment and putrefaction thus created scarcely accounts for the
origin of the disease, and its extension north-wards into the coldest
regions of Europe is inexplicable on such a hypothesis, though aided
by the modern hypothesis that its propagation is due simply to the
neglect of sanitary regulations, a theory now happily extended to all
zymotic diseases. Passing over the question as to the contagious nature
of plague, typhus, cholera, scarlatina, measles, a question still
undecided, and adhering simply to facts, we are assured by Procopius,
the fidelity of whose descriptions the great historian seems disposed
to vouch for, that the disease always spread “from the sea coast to
the inland country; the most sequestered islands and mountains were
successively visited; the places which had escaped the fury of its
first passage were alone exposed to the contagion of the ensuing year.
The winds might diffuse that subtle venom; but unless the atmosphere
be previously disposed for its reception, the plague would soon expire
in the cold and temperate climates of the earth. Such was the universal
corruption of the air, that the pestilence which burst forth in the
fifteenth of Justinian, was not checked or alleviated by any difference
of the seasons. In time, its first malignity was abated and dispersed;
the disease alternately languished and revived; but it was not till the
end of a calamitous period of fifty-two years that mankind recovered
their health, or the air resumed its pure and salubrious quality. No
facts have been preserved to sustain an account, or even a conjecture,
of the numbers that perished in this extraordinary mortality. I only
find that during three months, five, and at length ten thousand persons
died each day in Constantinople; that many cities of the East were left
vacant, and that in several districts of Italy the harvest and the
vintage withered on the ground. The triple scourge of war, pestilence,
and famine afflicted the subjects of Justinian; and his reign is
disgraced by a visible decrease of the human species, which has never
been repaired, in some of the fairest countries of the globe.”
[11] Gibbon, vol. vii., p. 421, Milman’s edition.
The plague of the time of Justinian is known to us only through the
medium of the Greek and Roman writers. We know nothing as to how
it affected the remote East, or whether that portion of the earth
escaped. No record exists to prove or disprove the passage across the
Atlantic, in ancient times, of plagues and pestilences, such as we
know now overleap with ease that seemingly impassable barrier. The
history of cholera in its progress from the East, though drawn up by
skilful official writers, tells us as little of its real nature as
Procopius did of the plague. It resembles in some respects the history
of ancient Egypt, each discovery merely adding another enigma to the
already existing and unexplained. Its propagation by contagion is still
denied by the first of medical authorities, and yet it must be admitted
that it pursues in a mysterious manner the paths of commerce, as if
by the abuse of trade, plagues, which would otherwise become extinct
in the land of their origin, are diffused over the continents of the
world.[12]
[12] The cholera, in so far as I know, has not as yet penetrated
beyond the tropic into the southern hemisphere.
The propagation of the plague by contagion was, as we have already
seen, distinctly denied by Procopius, and in this opinion he seems,
as in modern times, to have been backed by a majority of the people.
The immortal historian of “The Decline and Fall” did not partake
of Procopius’ doubts. “Contagion,” he remarks, “is the inseparable
symptom of the plague, which, by mutual respiration, is transfused from
the infected persons to the lungs and stomach of those who approach
them. While the philosophers believe and tremble, it is singular that
the existence of a real danger should have been denied by a people
most prone to vain and imaginary terrors. Yet the fellow-citizens of
Procopius were satisfied, by some short and partial experience, that
the infection could not be gained by the closest conversation; and
this persuasion might support the assiduity of friends or physicians
in the care of the sick, whom inhuman prudence would have condemned to
solitude and despair. But the fatal security, like the predestination
of the Turks, must have aided the progress of the contagion; and those
salutary precautions to which Europe is indebted for her safety, were
unknown to the government of Justinian. No restraints were imposed on
the free and frequent intercourse of the Roman provinces. From Persia
to France the nations were mingled and infected by wars and emigration,
and the pestilential odour which lurks for years in a bale of cotton
was imported by the abuse of trade into the most distant regions.”[13]
[13] In the _Times_ of to-day (September 8th), the contagious
character of the plague is stoutly denied by one who seems to write
from authority, or who at least is evidently well backed by a strong
party. The writer is evidently one of the Commissioners who met in
Paris some years ago to inquire into the working of the quarantine
laws. I offer no opinion on the subject,--though “one-idea” men,
they have a show of truth on their side, and especially in this,
that they adopt the popular view of the subject when they deny the
contagious nature of the plague. They boldly affirm that plague
only spreads in places where sanitary regulations are despised--a
consoling and useful theory, even if it were not true. They made
the same assertions of cholera--their hypothesis proved sadly at
fault. The pump-well water-drinking theory is the latest expression
of medical theorists in respect of the origin of the cholera: there
never was a greater delusion. It does not merit a refutation, and is
quite unworthy the professors of even a conjectural art. That the
symptoms of cholera strongly resemble the action of a violent poison
taken into the stomach, is not to be questioned, and that water may
have been the vehicle of such a poison is neither impossible nor
even improbable. The iced-water drinking population of Paris, of
Palermo, and of many Sicilian and Italian towns, suffered terribly
from cholera. Nor does it spare the temperate Mahometan, upon whom
cleanliness is enjoined as an article of his faith. Still, the wholly
inexplicable facts in the spread of cholera (and the same may be said
of plague, typhus, and yellow fever) are far too numerous to admit of
any generalization. Whilst the cholera spared Birmingham--at the time
neither properly drained nor sewered, it nearly depopulated Bilston,
a healthy town situated only a few miles from Birmingham, hundreds in
the meantime travelling between the two places every hour of the day.
It swept off the inhabitants of one side of a street in Deptford,
leaving those on the other side unscathed. All drank of the same
waters. The theory merits no attention.
Thus has been bandied about from the earliest times to the present
day, the great question of the origin of the pestilential diseases,
and their contagious properties when once produced. The question still
remains unsettled, nor has the advent of the cholera in modern times
contributed in the slightest degree to bring the disputation to a
demonstrative issue.
Are they of terrestrial or atmospheric origin properly, or do both
contribute their share towards the production of pestilences? How
originated the cholera, and how does it spread? These questions may
still be asked, and when asked must remain unanswered. The share
ascribed to man in the production and propagation of this and similar
diseases is mainly the object of this inquiry, and to that I shall
adhere as much as possible.
Men, ever anxious to discover the causes of events, ascribed the origin
of the plague in the reign of Justinian to the putrefaction of locusts;
but the same event may and has happened without being productive of
similar results--without, indeed, causing any disease whatever, as if
the poison, though present, were ineffectual unless aided by other
circumstances at present unknown to man. Those who have seen cholera
only as it prevails on the rotten banks of the Ganges, ascribe its
origin to heat and putrefaction, its extension to the habits of a
densely-congregated people. They forget, or choose not to remember,
that it raged in the depth of winter in the cold regions of Russia and
of Scotland, in thinly-populated villages, in hamlets, and insulated
cottages, scattered over the elevated yet cultivated estates of noble
and wealthy proprietors.[14] Those who have studied the phenomena of
typhus only in the horrid slums of Glasgow, in the wynds and closes of
cold and bleak Edinburgh--from which it is never absent, occasionally
raging with something like the virulence of a plague--ascribe the
origin and extension of the disease to cold and hunger, to a deficiency
of animal food, and to a contempt for all sanitary arrangements; but
they do not choose to remember that a few years ago typhus in its
worst form appeared in the south-eastern angle of England, spreading
thence through the midland counties, deeply affecting the population of
hamlets and villages the salubrity of whose site was unquestioned. And
if negative evidence be held sufficient to refute Procopius’ theory of
the origin of the true plague, we have but to look into the pages of a
modern traveller, whose official position naturally adds to the value
of his testimony. Mr. Barrow, in describing a visitation of locusts to
the Cape of Good Hope, makes the following curious remark:--“Their last
departure was rather singular. All the full-grown insects were driven
into the sea by a tempestuous north-west wind, and were afterwards
cast upon the beach, where it is said they formed a bank of three or
four feet high, which extended from the mouth of the Bosjesman river
to that of the Becca, a distance of nearly fifty English miles; and
it is asserted that when this mass became putrid, and the wind was
at south-east, the stench was sensibly felt in several parts of the
Sneuwberg.” The distance over which the stench was felt must have been
at least a hundred miles, the range of the Sneuwbergen being at about
this distance from the coast.
[14] It raged most severely in Scotland, in the remarkably healthy
village of Prestonpans and Fisher-row; in the highest and healthiest
parts of Edinburgh; amongst the peasantry and miners scattered over
the high grounds of Midlothian, belonging to the Marquis of Lothian.
These people lived comfortably in detached cottages amongst the
fields.
It is hardly necessary for me to observe, that no disease followed the
destruction and putrefaction of these locusts. The colony of South
Africa still continues free from plague and cholera, and many other
diseases afflicting the most favoured of European lands; consumption,
scrofula, and fever are all but unknown. I am not aware that the
inhabitants are in any way remarkable for their sanitary arrangements,
whilst of the Hottentots it may with truth be said, that they are at
once the healthiest and dirtiest people in the world.
Thus, after the lapse of many centuries, the great questions debated
in the time of Justinian--may we not rather say in the days of
Thucydides?--surge up again whenever a new plague appears on the earth.
The professors of “the conjectural art,” anxious to vindicate their
claim to activity, and to share in the laudations bestowed on the
superior intelligence of the present day, offer at present a highly
consolatory view, not only as to the origin of these diseases, but as
to their speedy suppression. They argue that, but for the neglect of
hygienic measures, such influences or poisons would either not arise,
or would pass on their course, leaving the nations unscathed. In the
meantime, it is prudent to recall to the recollection of those who
arrive rashly at conclusions such as these--who theorize on narrow
local ground--who are sanguine enough to look forward to the speedy
extinction of all zymotic diseases, that pestilential and destructive
epidemics are not confined to man; that, under the form of murrains,
they destroy the beasts of the field. In the murrain of 1747, it is
stated on authority that 30,000 cattle died in Cheshire in the course
of half a year. The marsh districts suffered most; and it has even
been conjectured that such epizootic diseases usually originate amidst
swamps and malarious districts; but of this we have no proofs. Even
the harvests to which man looks for sustenance are not spared--nor
the vine; the life-destroying principle, attacking these lower forms
of life, cannot well be traced to the neglect of hygienic measures on
the part of man, or of the animals or plants themselves; and yet in
the midst of these bogs and marshes which undeniably give origin to
some forms of fever, the buffalo, the ox, the camel, the elephant,
and the wild of all species, live and thrive. Thus the question of
the origin of disease is complicated _ab origine_; the origin of
typhus--that scourge and pest of the nations inhabiting the temperate
regions, more especially of Western Europe, and of the British Isles
in particular--is absolutely unknown. To affect to trace it to a foul
drain, an uncleansed sewer, an untrapped cesspool, a laystall, a
collection of neglected rubbish, is clearly against the evidence and
the daily experience of thousands; but all are agreed that in certain
fenny and marshy countries fevers prevail--intermittent in temperate,
remittent in ardent climes nearer the tropic; whilst within the tropics
the life of the European stranger can scarcely be valued at a week’s
purchase.[15] To this destructive influence, most commonly connected
with a marshy soil, the Italian first gave the name of malaria--a
useful appellation, universally accepted as implying no theory; and had
such fevers been found only in such localities, the inference must have
followed, that a something, open to the chemist to discover, emanating
or produced by these marshes, was solely and distinctly the cause of
all such fevers. But now a more careful and extended inquiry shows
that such fevers are not confined to those districts, but infest even
the hay-field, are not unfrequent in or near woods growing on soils
where marshes have ever been unknown; whilst as regards the more ardent
remittents of Eastern countries, the statistics of Major Tulloch have
all but destroyed the theory which would trace to marshes exclusively
the fevers which in such countries set all medical treatment and all
human precautions at defiance.[16]
[15] This question, in so far as regards a military life, has been
handled in a masterly manner by Major Tulloch.
[16] In the expedition to St. Domingo, the English army forming the
expedition landed 10,000 strong; they withdrew in five weeks, without
striking a blow or seeing an enemy. Their numbers were reduced to
1100. See “History of the Expedition to St. Domingo,” by Dr. Maclean.
This uncertainty of life from the effects of malaria must ever, I
think, remain whilst the true nature of the poison is unknown; and
it is with a view to discover, if possible, the circumstances under
which it originates, that I undertook this difficult inquiry. Long
resident in a country supposed to be an ague-producing land, I watched
with much interest the social condition of a sagacious, prudent, and
industrious race of men, who could thus, at one and the same time,
preserve their liberty and life from the hostile assaults of furious,
implacable tyrants from without, and of an insidious, invisible enemy
within, walking stealthily around the habitations of men, poisoning the
air of his house, his fields, and gardens. It was in Holland that a
French general, writing to the great Napoleon, and complaining of the
destruction of the garrisons by fever, received from him the only reply
which at the time the necessities of the mighty conqueror permitted
him to give--“_L’homme meurt partout_.” “Man dies everywhere,” was the
only answer, if answer it could be called, to a kind-hearted commander,
more touched by the calamity around him than by the exigencies of the
State.
But how was it that whilst French and English soldiers perished so
unaccountably in the prime of life, the inhabitants of these countries
lived seemingly unaware of the pestilence walking around and amongst
them? This problem may, I think, be solved; and as not foreign to
the matter in hand, I may be permitted to glance at the character,
position, and social condition of a race and a nation so distinct from
all other branches of the great European family. My remarks will bear
mainly on the influence they exercise over the portion of the earth
they inhabit, and on the modifications which man’s industry, guided by
prudence and science, may imprint on “the earth, the air, and water”
of the territory which, under the circumstances I now describe, may
especially be called their own.