OF THE CAUSES OF EPIDEMIC PESTILENCES.
“Docebo causas, quas diligentiâ experientiâque comperi.”
Experience has taught us that the phenomena of epidemic pestilences
or diseases are various and dissimilar, observing no regular course
or succession, but commencing and ceasing at periods influenced by
certain changes of the seasons, and modified by various circumstances,
especially such as locality and habit of body.
The chronicles of all nations are replete with notices respecting
the remarkable commotions of nature, which have proved from time
to time so inimical both to the animal and the vegetable kingdoms;
and on carefully reviewing the facts detailed in the histories of
epidemic pestilences or diseases, it will be readily perceived that,
during certain periods or seasons, ELEMENTAL DISTURBANCE has
enveloped, as it were, the entire globe, carrying death and misery into
every quarter. I am, therefore, of opinion that the grand phenomena of
nature, exhibited in the commotions of our physical world, supply us
with abundant materials for the explication of all epidemic pestilences
or diseases; that the latter are consequently assignable to natural
causes, without searching for or hunting after mysterious agencies, to
the neglect of those which Nature is constantly presenting to our view.
I am fully aware that ascertaining the causes of maladies of any
description is a matter attended with much difficulty, not only from
the variety and impalpable nature of the causes themselves, but also
from the peculiar functions and various idiosyncrasies of the living
system on which such causes act; numerous conditions being found
capable of modifying the effects of a common cause of disease, viz.
the season of the year, peculiar state of the atmosphere, especially
as regards heat and humidity, circumstances of locality, the different
temperaments of individuals exposed to their agency, the influence of
previous ailments,--all these concurring more or less in the production
of diversified forms of disease.
By way of illustration and with reference to atmospheric influence--the
_grand exciting_ cause of disease,--every practitioner is familiar
with certain conditions which are favourable to the production of
certain disorders, such as common catarrh or cold, and its more
aggravated form termed influenza,--hooping-cough, bowel affections,
gastric fevers, &c. The effects of external temperature first produce
on the functions of the skin (which connects us with the exterior
world) an augmentation or diminution of the natural discharges, by
suddenly changing or disturbing the balance of the circulating fluids
between the external and internal parts or surfaces, irrespective
of the perspiratory process, commonly termed sweat, there being
innumerable chemical agents more poisonous and of greater importance
as to their elimination from the system in the shape of insensible
perspiration. I repeat, that the effects of external temperature, by
causing a repercussion of the cutaneous exhalations (sensible and
insensible), so damage the _vitality_ of the system, as to be the
_exciting_ cause of disease; and, although from our imperfect
knowledge, it scarcely admits of investigation, setting aside chemical
research, so that we cannot explain or define the precise peculiarity
of each and every condition of the atmosphere favourable to the
production of each variety of disorder, the effects of such external
temperature are, however, not the less certain and obvious to our
senses. The agencies are all natural, comprised in the excess of state
or change acting on individuals whose susceptibility varies greatly
from moral as well as from physical _predisposing_ causes; but
our inability to define their peculiar conditions or auræ, as noticed
by Hippocrates, Sydenham, Bacon, and others, no more militates against
our reasoning upon their visible effects, than a knowledge of the
gravitating principle or power is essential to the proof of gravity.
But to the subject of the causes,--the exciting and the predisposing
of disease; it should be premised that when attributing epidemic
pestilences or diseases to natural causes, it must not be supposed or
inferred that any one of such causes, as heat, cold, moisture, drought,
&c., will alone be sufficient to induce disease: to effect that, there
must be a combination of these causes in continuance and succession, in
occasion and variation, as also in circumstance and virulence.
It has always appeared to me that a proper and sufficient distinction
is never, or rather, has never, been made, between the predisposing and
the exciting causes of disease--an error which leads to much confusion
and to contradictory conclusions on all sides. _Par exemple_,
in a Report on the epidemic pestilence which raged some years ago in
Ireland, it was unanimously determined, (so says the Report,) “that the
predisposing causes were, rapid atmospherical vicissitude, low marsh
and other effluvia.” Here we have the exciting cause, ‘atmospheric
vicissitude,’ jumbled together with a predisposing cause, ‘marsh
effluvia;’ while on the other hand, in recent Reports on cholera from
various authorities, we have marsh and other effluvia assigned as the
exciting causes, which, on reflection, will strike any one as being
obviously fallacious, inasmuch as if marsh and other effluvia are to
be considered as exciting causes, instead of predisposing to disease,
we should scarcely ever find those places free from pestilence where
these matters are supposed to be engendered, whereas we see various
localities in South America,--in British Guiana, for instance, and even
in Ethiopia,--which have been condemned as the hot-bed and nursery of
pestilence, where putrefaction is supposed to concoct and concentrate
its most lethal poisons,--still enjoy their seasons of salubrity: it
is, I repeat, from the absence of such distinctions as to the exciting
and the predisposing causes, coupled with the non-consideration of
the great variety of circumstances, both past and present, local and
general, individual and common, which are influential in the production
of disease, that so much uncertainty and disputation as to the causes
of epidemic pestilences have arisen. Such distinctions will appear to
be more important and necessary for the prevention and mitigation of
epidemic pestilence or disease, when properly considered, inasmuch as
the predisposing causes, which are in a great degree under our control,
are always in existence or operation to a greater or less extent, while
the exciting causes may be said to be of only occasional occurrence.
As before observed, the causes of diseases are described as the
predisposing and the exciting. The former, the predisposing causes,
I understand to be,--the want of light; impure air (especially
from defective ventilation), in which are included malaria and all
other noxious vapours, from whatever source arising; a scanty and
impoverishing diet; and, though last, not least, habit of body, induced
by the irregular and artificial life of man in a state of civilization,
which, by enervating the system, induces the predisposition to disease
by rendering the human frame more susceptible to external impressions;
the grand excitants of disease, such as elemental disturbance,
consisting of variations of temperature and the state of the
surrounding medium, as to hygrometric influence, electrical tension, &c.
Naturalists in all ages have concurred in the opinion that sudden
atmospheric mutations act injuriously on the subjects of the vegetable
kingdom as well as on those of the animal, and it will, I presume, be
admitted that the existence of the vegetable kingdom is necessary for
the support of the animal,--the physiology of both reflecting much
light on each other. We see the vegetable kingdom assailed by disease
termed _blight_,--‘pestiferous blight,’ as it has been called
by some; these blights are but pestilences affecting the vegetable
kingdom, and have ever been attributed to natural causes, elemental
disturbance, &c.
At the periods which have been remarkable for the occurrence of
blights, animals--such as horned cattle--have been known to suffer
sooner or later; and man also, as I shall in the course of these
pages fully show. Reasoning analogically, therefore, may we not
conclude that that state or condition of the elements which induces
blights,--pestilences in the vegetable,--will also act injuriously on
the animal kingdom, more especially on the human race, men being, from
habit of body, &c., more prone to or susceptible of disease?
Referring to the annals of history, which so abundantly show that
the ancients considered all universal distempers as originating in
the disturbed states of the seasons, I will cite a few instances
(commencing with sacred history) explanatory of the causes of universal
maladies, termed epidemic pestilences or diseases.
In the books of the Old and New Testaments we find beautifully
described the great causes of pestilence inducing their effects in
regular succession and with absolute certainty. The books of God, in
tracing the hand of Omnipotence through the medium of secondary causes,
producing effects punitive of guilty mortals, attribute all diseases to
the immediate interposition of Divine Providence:
“Pestis et ira Deûm Stygiis sese extulit undis.”
And why?--Because God is the first great cause, the original creator of
all things, the preserver and governor of all things in heaven and on
the earth, and likewise the sole disposer of the elements.
Seeing, therefore, that our Creator, while possessing the sovereignty
of the universe, may employ what agents he pleases for the execution
of his purposes, we, in investigating the causes of all distempers,
without in the slightest degree impugning their divine origin, can
perceive that the Almighty Disposer of events effected his purposes by
the employment of natural means;--further, in expounding the causes of
disease, as existing in natural and common things, and modification of
beings and things of this natural world, we can do equal homage to the
Almighty’s wisdom and goodness, omnipotence, justice, mercy, judgment,
and providence, as we can in displaying them as immediately inflicted
on guilty man. Yea, more glorious do the attributes of the Most High
appear in the sublime mysteries of nature!
To particularize: when the governors of the five cities, Gath, Ekron,
Askelon, Gaza, and Ashdod, met for the purpose of contriving to rid
themselves of the ark which the Philistines had captured from the
Hebrews, it would appear that they were cognizant of the natural means
adopted by the Almighty to effect his purposes, although they, in their
impiety, doubted the divine origin of their affliction by pestilence.
Overlooking the omnipotence and all-wise direction of their Creator,
they exhorted the people to bear patiently that which had befallen
them, and to believe in no other causes of the pestilence which was
effecting their destruction _than those springing from the operations
of nature, which at certain revolutions of time produce such mutations
in the bodies of men, in the earth, in plants, and in all things grown
out of the earth, as to excite disease_.
With reference to elemental disturbance, the prophet Amos (ch. iv.
vss. 8 and 9) first describes the occurrence of a great drought,
then the generation of insects--the palmer-worm and the canker-worm,
which destroyed all foliage and herbage: vegetables, orchards, and
olive-yards, all fell a sacrifice, and induced a grievous famine,
succeeded by a dire pestilence.
Habakkuk, in his prayer, (chap. iii.) makes allusion to a great
pestilence preceded by earthquakes and great commotions of the
elements; the sun and moon standing still in their habitations, the
mountains trembling, and the waters overflowing, causing famine and
pestilence, to the destruction of 14,000 persons.
Again, in the 28th chapter of Deuteronomy, which contains the promised
cursings and blessings of the Almighty on his people, we have a
proverbial figure of speech, _expressively_ illustrative of the
natural means employed by our Creator in effecting his purposes: “And
thy heaven shall be brass, and the earth iron;” the one denoting a
drought, during which the heavens will yield no rain, inferring also
extreme heat; the other, the unproductiveness of the earth, yielding
no fruit,--the effects of such drought being to induce famine, and
ultimately disease. The experience of our own times exemplifies in the
fullest manner the concurrence, from _physical causes_, of famine
with pestilence--facts which the prophets of old always connected,
viz., the sword, famine, and pestilence, as being three evils which
generally accompanied or followed each other; and we cannot conceive
a doubt as to the association not being accidental, especially of the
two latter, but arising from their dependence upon similar atmospheric
phenomena.
Jeremiah (chap, iv., vss. 11 and 13), in describing the approach
of the armies of Babylon, compares them to the drying, parching,
scorching, and blasting winds of Egypt, Africa, Arabia, and Asia, which
wither and destroy the fruit of the earth, melting and oppressing all
living creatures; and he likens them to clouds of dust and whirlwinds
traversing those pestiferous countries of the East, where the heat
and drought, the dews and damps, heavy rains, the cold north winds of
winter and spring, succeeded by the suffocating heats of summer and
autumn, generate pestilence and cutaneous diseases.
In turning to the history of Egypt,--to this day a hot-bed of
pestilence,--we have graphically pictured a series of events occurring
and ending in the production of pestilential disease. The waters of the
rivers were first turned red, the fish died, and stank therein, causing
putrefaction of their bodies, while the waters became unfit for use,
either by men or beasts: secondly, swarms of frogs infected the land,
penetrating into the very houses; these were succeeded by a host of
insects, lice, flies, &c.: thirdly, the beasts of the field suffered
from murrain; and finally, man suffered from boils, blains, &c. If we
look into the topography of Egypt, we shall find abundant causes to
account for its great and continued insalubrity;--the whole country
lies near the tropic of Cancer; it is bounded towards the east by the
Red Sea, on the west by the deserts of Libya, on the north by the
Mediterranean, and on the south by Abyssinia or Upper Ethiopia. All the
lower country is encompassed by the arms of the Nile, and is inundated
annually by that father of rivers, when it overflows: it rises
twenty-four feet in perpendicular height at the medium increase of four
inches daily, and it continues from the end of June to the beginning
of September, when it begins gradually to subside. The inhabitants sow
their corn and vegetables in October and November, immediately after
the retiring of the waters; their harvest-time is in March and April.
Volney observes that the surface of the land successively assumes the
appearance of an ocean of fresh water, of a miry morass, of a green
level plain, and of a parched desert of sand and dust, and all in such
rapid succession that it can never be otherwise than insalubrious.
To recapitulate more fully. In that calamitous period in the days
of Moses, as shown in the history of Egypt already alluded to, the
season was distinguished by an extraordinary phenomenon, the waters
being turned to the colour of blood by the addition of some remarkable
materials or insects which killed all their fish, and caused the waters
to stink in all the low lands of Egypt, so that they could not drink
the waters of the river or of their ponds for seven days; this peculiar
condition of the waters, and the heat of the atmosphere, engendered
swarms of frogs, which, it is stated, came up into their houses, into
their very bed-rooms, entered into their ovens, and even into their
dough. Some great commotion of the elements, or a great and sudden
change of the weather, killed the frogs in their houses, villages, and
fields. When the people gathered their carcases into heaps, so great
were their numbers that the whole land stank with their putrefying
bodies; lice began afterwards to infect the inhabitants, as well as
the bodies of domestic animals; swarms of noisome insects, such as
flies, &c., succeeded the general putrefaction of the dead frogs,
and as the excesses of the seasons continued and increased, a mortal
pestilence among domestic animals, cattle and horses, camels, oxen and
sheep, ensued. This was the presage to an awful pestilence among men,
according to the common course of nature; indeed the Egyptians had not
recovered the loss of their cattle, when fiery pustules, apostemes,
and putrid ulcers infested their own bodies. After this succession of
evils, a dreadful storm of hail arose and destroyed cattle, herbs, and
fruit; in this tremendous tempest, we read that the lightning, mingled
with hail, ran along the ground, and was so very dismal and grievous in
its appearance and effects, that Pharaoh and all his people trembled as
if the pillars of nature had been shaken to their very foundation, and
the world was about to come to an end: to add to these dire calamities,
hosts of locusts were brought by the east wind over all the land of
Egypt; they rested on all the coasts and borders of the land, covering
the face of the earth, so that the ground was blackened by them; while
they devoured the residue of the herbs which the hailstorm had spared,
not one green thing remaining in the land of Egypt.
Soon after this, a strong west wind began to blow, which cast all
the locusts into the Red Sea, where they were drowned; their bodies
being subsequently washed on shore, stank intolerably, and became a
great auxiliary cause of pestilence amongst the inhabitants. Meantime
three days of astonishing darkness spread over all the land, and the
inhabitants could not see each other, neither did they rise from
their seats; pestilence meanwhile was rife in the land. This terrible
distemper first seized all the young and robust, all the first-born
of man and beast--from the first-born of the king to that of the
slave,--yea, there was not a house in which there were not some dead;
so tremendous was the stroke that the sacred historian calls it the
immediate judgment of God to punish their wickedness. And behold it
happened in the dead of the night, says the devout narrator, that the
Lord smote all the first-born of Egypt, from the first-born of Pharaoh
that sat on the throne to the first-born of the maid-servant that
stands behind the mill, and even the firstlings of the beasts;--in
short, so dreadful was the calamity and destruction that the Egyptians
cried out, “We be all dead men!”
Looking to all the foregoing circumstances detailed, can we hesitate
to attribute the terrible malady which prevailed in Egypt to any but
the pestilential constitution of the season?--can we suppose the
operation of any other than natural causes, such as long drought,
excessive heats, hot burning winds, clouds of suffocating dust and
sand; heavy rains succeeding the drought; storms of hail mingled with
lightning; famine, the consequence of the destruction produced by the
locusts and devouring insects; the noxious emanations from dead frogs
which had been destroyed by the dismal commotions of the elements; and
the insufferable stench arising from the carcases of the quantity of
dead animals? Can we imagine, I ask, any other causes to have been in
existence to produce such awful pestilence than those of the sudden
great changes of the weather, inundations of the rivers, and the
universal corruption of dead animal and vegetable matter throughout the
dominion of Egypt? I reiterate the question,--have we not abundance of
material to account for this terrible infliction on the people of Egypt?
About this period of dire suffering of the Egyptians from pestilence,
the first dreadful epoch of Spanish epidemiology is recorded as having
commenced; the date, however, has been variously given. By some writers
it is fixed about the time of David, 1017 B.C., when 70,000
persons were destroyed in three days by pestilence; by other writers
it is stated to have commenced amongst the Spanish 1100 B.C.
There were _twenty-five_ years of drought in Spain without
interruption; springs were dried up; rivers became fordable, their
waters being almost stagnant; there was neither pasture for beasts, nor
fruit for man; so great was the barrenness of the land, that there was
scarcely anything green to be found, except some few olive-trees on the
banks of the Ebro and the Guadalquivir: such, says the historian, was
the melancholy state of ancient Spain, “full of dreadful mortalities,
plagues, and miseries of every description, which, with emigration to
other lands, nearly depopulated our country.”
The Greek poet, Homer, describes the causes of the pestilence which
attacked the armies at the siege of Troy as being attributable to the
extreme heat of the weather and the unfriendly seasons. He styles the
sun Apollo:
“On mules and dogs th’ infection first began,
And last the vengeful arrows fix’d on man;
But let some prophet or some sacred sage
Explore the cause of Great Apollo’s rage.”
Thucydides, another celebrated Greek historian, describes a similar
condition of the atmosphere with physical irregularities, as causing an
awful pestilence at Athens:
τεκμήριον δὲ τῶν μὲν τοιούτων ὀρνίθων ἐπίλειψις σαφὴς ἐγένετο,
καὶ οὐχ ἑωρῶντο οὔτε ἄλλως οὔτε περὶ τοιοῦτον οὐδέν· οἱ δὲ κύνες
μᾶλλον αἴσθησιν παρεῖχον τοῦ ἀποβαίνοντος διὰ τὸ ξυνδιαιτᾶσθαι.
Lucretius, in imitating Thucydides, thus expresses himself:
“Nec tamen omnino temere illis solibus ulla
Comparebat avis, nec noctibus secla ferarum
Exibant sylvis; languebant pleraque morbo
Et moriebantur; cum primis fida canum vis
Strata viis animam ponebat in omnibus ægram;
Extorquebat enim vitam vis morbida membris.”
“No longer birds at noon, nor beasts at night,
Their native woods deserted; with the pest
Remote they languish’d and full frequent died;
But chief the dog his generous strength resign’d,
Tainting the highways, while the ruthless bane
Through every limb his sickening spirit drove.”
The poet Ovid, in the seventh book of his Metamorphoses, in describing
the terrible pestilence which occurred in the island of Egina (see
‘History of Pestilences’), represents the pestilence as arising from
the following causes:--He exhibits the earth covered with dense clouds,
darkness, and suffocating heat; the deadly south winds blowing for four
months, the very vapours of disease; the lakes and fountains infected,
the air poisoned, and the entire land infested with venomous serpents,
as happened to the people of old. The plague or pestilence first
attacked horses, oxen, mules, sheep, dogs, cats, and even birds, and
then it affected mankind; death was sudden, and the streets were choked
with the carcases of men and beasts, and universal nature seemed to be
suffering from premature caducity.
In order to show the identity of this pestilence with the plague of
Egypt, the bilious remittent or yellow pestilence of the West Indies
and the United States, the disease termed Andalusian fever which has
from the earliest ages made such havoc in Spain and the adjoining
country, and also with the pestilence which has more than once
visited both England and Ireland in days of yore, we have collected
the symptoms of that disease from Ovid’s poetical enumeration of the
morbid phenomena, which were,--great heat in the bowels, flushings
of the face, difficulty of breathing, bilious vomiting, pains in the
head, with obstinate constipation, great prostration of strength,
unquenchable thirst, delirium, often attended with coma, great anguish,
dry black tongue, cough, &c., which proceeded to a fatal termination in
the course of two, three, or four days: the following is a translation
or imitation of the original.
“A dreadful plague from angry Juno came,
To scourge the land that bore her rival’s name,
Before her fatal anger was reveal’d,
And teeming malice lay as yet conceal’d.
At first we only felt th’ oppressive weight
Of gloomy clouds, then teeming with our fate,
And labouring to discharge the sultry heat:
But ere four moons alternate changes knew,
With deadly blasts the fatal south wind blew,
Infected all the air, and poison’d as it flew.
Our mountains, too, a dire infection yield,
For crowds of vipers creep along the field,
And with polluted gore and baneful teems
Taint all the lakes and venom all the streams.
The young disease with milder rage began,
Seized on birds and beasts, approaching man;
The labouring oxen fall before the plough--
The ploughmen wonder, stare, can’t imagine how;
The tabid sheep, with sickly bleatings pine,
Their wool decreasing as their strength decline;
The warlike steeds, by inward foes compell’d,
Neglect their honours and desert the field;
Enerved and languid, seek a base retreat,
And at the mangers groan, but wish’d a nobler fate.
The stags forget their speed, the boars their rage,
Nor can the bears the stronger herds engage:
A common faintness now invades them all,
In woods and fields promiscuously they fall.
The air exhales the stench, and, strange to say,
The ravenous birds and beasts avoid the prey;
The putrid bodies rot upon the ground,
And spread the dire contagion all around.
Meanwhile the plague acquires a larger size,
It feasts on men, and scorns a meaner prize.
Intestine heats begin the civil war,
And flushings first the latent flame declare,
And fiery breath, which seem’d like burning air.
Their black dry tongues are swell’d and scarcely move,
And short thick sighs from panting lungs evolve:
They gasp for air, with vainest hopes to sate
Their raging flames, but that augments their heat.
No bed, no covering, can the sicken’d bear--
All on the ground exposed to open air,
They lie, and hope to find a pleasing coolness there.
The burning earth, with hot oppression curst,
Returns the heat which they imparted first.
All remedies they try, all med’cines use,
Which nature could supply or art produce:
Invincible, it mocks the vain design,
And art and nature foil’d--declare the cause divine.”
Hippocrates, the great founder and parent of rational medicine, in his
book on Epidemic Distempers, accurately delineates the vicissitudes of
the weather and the different seasons of the year, attributing to them
the causes of all diseases. He thus describes a state of atmosphere
producing a most extraordinarily dismal pestilence and mortality: A
season marked by abundant showers, a south wind following drought; a
hot and sultry autumn, with abundant rain; a humid, open, light, and
warm winter, extremes of cold after the conversion of the sun under
the equinox, with winds blowing, with snow and sudden great change of
weather.
“Annus austrinus, imbribus abundans atque in totum ventis tranquillus
fuit. Quum autem paulo superioribus anni temporibus justo majores
siccitates viguissent, sub Arcturum sperantibus austris multum fuit.
Autumnus obscurus, nebulosus, cum aquarum abundantiâ, hyems austrina
humida et levis. Longo vero post solis conversionem intervallo juxta
Æquinoctium, extremæ hyemes adfuerunt; jamque sub Æquinoctium ipsum
Aquilonares venti cum nivibus non ita diu speravere. Ver rursus
austrinum a flatibus quietum, aquæ multæ et continentes ad canem
usque. Æstas verum calida, æstus præfocantes magna. Anniversarii venti
(Etesias vocant) pauci disjunctim speravere. Sub Arcturum rursus
spirantibus aquilonibus aquæ multæ.”--(On Epidemics, bk. iii. sect. 3.)
Again, in section 8 and 18 we have: “In aëre considerandum quanta insit
caliditas, frigiditas, crassitudo, tenuitas, siccitas, humiditas an
plenior an vero minor et copiosior. In quibus quænam mutationes et ex
quibus fiunt, quomodoque se habeant, animadvertere oportet,”--plainly
signifying that a pestilential constitution of the seasons consists of
atmospheric vicissitudes, heat and cold, dryness and moisture out of
season and in excess.
Galen, the great commentator on the works of his master, assigns two
causes to pestilence; the one, a great irregularity of the seasons, and
consequently a pestilential state of the air; the other, a vitiated
condition of the human body from corrupt and defective food, impure
air, &c., by which means it is rendered liable to disease: here we have
the exciting and the predisposing causes of disease clearly pointed
out.
Further, in illustration of continued drought inducing famine with its
other evils, disease and mortality, we may quote Tasso’s beautiful
description of the sufferings of the Christian army under the walls of
Jerusalem:
“The leaves grew wan, upon the wither’d sprays
The grass and growing herb all parched were;
Earth cleft in rifts, in floods each stream decay,
And barren clouds with lightning bright appear.
Still was the air, the rack nor came nor went,
But o’er the land, with lukewarm breathing flies
The southern wind, from sun-burnt Afric sent,
Which thick and warm, his interrupted blast,
Upon their bosoms, throats, and faces cast.
Nor yet more comfort brought the gloomy night;
In her thick shades was burning heat up roll’d,
Her sable mantle was embroider’d bright,
With blazing stars and gliding fires for gold.
Nor to refresh (sad earth’s) thy thirsty sprite
The niggard Moon let fall her May-dews cold,
And dried up the vital moisture was
In trees, in plants, in herbs, in flowers, in grass.
And little Silve, that his store bestows
Of purest crystal on the Christian hands,
The pebbles naked in his channel shows,
And scanty glides above the scorched sands.
* * * * *
The sturdy bodies of the warriors strong,
Whom neither marching far, nor tedious way,
Nor weighty arms which on their shoulders hung,
Could weary make, nor death itself dismay,
Now weak and feeble cast their limbs along,
Unwieldy burthens on the burning clay;
And in each vein a smouldering fire there dwelt,
Which dried their flesh, and solid bones did melt.
Languish’d the steed, late fierce, and proffer’d grass
His fodder erst despised and from him kest;
Each step he stumbled, and which lofty was
And high advanced before now fell his crest;
His conquest gotten, all forgotten pass,
Nor with desire of glory swell’d his breast;
The spoils won from his foe, his late rewards,
He now neglects, despises, nought regards.
Languish’d the faithful dog, and wonted care
Of his dear lord and cabin both forgot;
Panting he laid, and gather’d fresher air
To cool the burning in his entrails hot;
But breathing (which wise nature did prepare
To ‘suage the stomach’s heat) now booted not,
For little ease, (alas!) small help they win,
That breathe forth air, and scalding fire suck in.”
The learned prelate Eusebius gives a very philosophical description
of the impure state of the atmosphere during a great pestilence which
ravaged the Roman empire. He writes thus: “The air was so noxious,
every where deranged with corrupt vapours, fumes from the earth so
putrid, winds from the sea, exhalations from marshes and rivers so
injurious, that a certain poisonous liquor, as it were from putrid
carcases, was brought by the elements, and covered the subjacent seats
or benches, walls, and sides of houses, and the dew appeared like the
sanies of dead bodies.” (See edit. Paris. 1628.)
Tacitus, in his description of Rome, notes the occurrence, every third
or fourth year, of what they termed “tempus grave aut annus pestilens,”
and he gives the following tetrastichon--
“Rome voracious of men subdues the lofty necks of heroes;
Rome full of fevers is frightful with the seeds of death;
Roman fevers are faithful by their lasting course,
When they once invade, seldom quit the living man.”
If the site of Rome with its other concomitants be considered, we shall
readily understand why pestilences were there so rife. It is situated
in a level country on the low banks of the Tiber, surrounded by the
extensive Ostiensian and Pontine marshes, exposed to the powerful
rays of the sun, and subject to inundations and other commotions of
the elements; further the inhabitants having been constantly engaged
in war, did not cultivate their lands sufficiently to produce food
for half the population, nor had they any established commercial
intercourse with other countries, from which they could be supplied in
times of scarcity. From their perpetual inroads agriculture was also
interrupted among all the adjoining nations, and the far-famed Romans
were often reduced to the necessity of feeding upon grass, leaves,
and unwholesome roots, or of consuming the provender stored for their
cattle, till men and beasts, and, it is said, birds and fish, perished
together, so pestilential were the seasons; “vulgato per omne genus
animalium morbo.”
I might go on multiplying authorities _ad infinitum_ to show
that previously to the middle of the seventeenth century those ages
were full of physical and political miseries, sufficient to account
for the frequent outbreak of fatal maladies; and we shall also find
that subsequently to that period all those countries that have
adopted judicious regulations in the construction of their dwellings,
in widening their streets, improving the drainage, and securing an
adequate supply of the three grand essentials to vitality,--light, air,
and water, have proportionately experienced a corresponding immunity
from pestilence, a notable exemplification of which we have in this
our own country, although we are far, very far, in this the nineteenth
century, from the improved condition that our wealth and the repeated
warnings of disease which have been vouchsafed us, especially since the
year 1832,--now nearly twenty years,--should have given rise to.
It was not, however, until after the great fire in 1666, at the
rebuilding of London, as it were, that any measures were taken to
secure the public health. In the year 1665, during the time of the
great and terrible plague, our streets were narrow, and the houses,
which were built of wood, closed inwards towards each other, one
story projecting considerably above the other, till they seemed
almost to touch each other at the top, and looking upwards from the
street towards the sky was very like looking up from the bottom of a
well. There were scarcely any sewers; the streets were damp and wet,
and nearly everything in the shape of offal was thrown into them,
while certain corporate bodies, the ecclesiastical authorities even,
contended stoutly for the right of sending their swine into the
streets to feed upon such garbage as they found plentifully therein.
It would also appear that the general habits of the citizens in no way
counteracted the bad effects of their faulty architecture by domestic
cleanliness.
The celebrated Erasmus asserts that the interior of the dwellings in
London was disgusting to the last degree. He plainly ascribed ‘the
sweating sickness,’ which was a species of plague, to the incommodious
form and bad position of the houses, the filthiness of the streets, and
the sluttishness within doors. In a letter to a physician of Cardinal
Wolsey’s, in which he gives an account of the domestic habits of our
countrymen in those days, he says, “There is a degree of uncleanliness,
and even of filth, pourtrayed, of which we can have no conception in
our times.” He continues: “The floors are commonly of clay, strewed
with rushes, which were occasionally removed, but underneath lies
unmolested an ancient collection of beer, grease, fragments of fish,
spittle, the excrements of dogs, cats, and everything that was nasty.”
Hentzer observes, that even the floor of the presence-chamber of the
Queen Elizabeth, in Greenwich Palace, “was covered with hay after the
English fashion;” and Hume remarks, as a proof of the meanness of
living in those days, “that the comptroller of the household of Edward
the Sixth paid only 30s. a year for his house in Channel Row, which
like the generality of the streets of London was unpaved and undrained,
and contained an accumulation of the offal and such filth as was
habitually thrown into them.”
Sydenham, who writes of the changes produced in the amount of disease
according to locality, the constitutions of the seasons, &c., notices
that London in his day was ill-built, ill-drained, ill-supplied with
water, and the neighbouring country to the very suburbs so badly
cleared, as to subject the inhabitants to a return of agues regularly
in spring and autumn; and in the journal of De Foe we have assigned
as one of the many causes of the pestilence that occurred in this
country in 1665, the crowded state of the city and suburbs, which were
prodigiously full in consequence of the disbanding of the armies after
the restoration of the royal family and of the monarchy. Our city, says
De Foe, was computed to have had in it 100,000 inhabitants _more_
than it ever entertained before; some computed the number as being
twice as many, so that pestilence became in one year (1665) more
terribly destructive from the immense numbers crowded together, aided
by peculiar elemental disturbances, which had been rife for several
years previously; pestilence indeed may be said to have existed in
London continuously from the year 1661 unto 1666.
In the year 1665 the terrible plague became aggravated in the month
of July, from the sultriness of the atmosphere, cold nocturnal dews
or damp fogs, frequent cold showers and cold winds alternating with
the warmth and dryness of the air; in short, every extreme vicissitude
seemed to exist in that dismal period of disease and death, producing
agues, bilious disorders, bowel complaints, &c. In the next month the
great general pestilence appeared to swallow up as it were all previous
diseases in one common destruction. Indeed, from the month of August
all other diseases were absorbed in the pestilence: all distempers,
commencing in their usual form, were uniformly resolved into the deadly
plague; and in the month of September, says the great historian,
“Death rode triumphant among the devoted inhabitants of London; having
borrowed the fatal scythe of Time, he mowed down the people like grass,
and immerged the poor remains in horror and despair.”
Having advanced thus much in support of the natural causes of universal
distempers or epidemic pestilences, culled from the histories of
pestilences from the earliest ages, we arrive at the consideration of
that ‘vexata quæstio,’--contagion.