Our recent English medical exchanges mention, with undisguised
apprehension, the fact that already early this spring authentic
observers state that the plague has broken out in Bagdad, and is
rapidly increasing there; and information from other sources renders
it probable that the disease has shown itself in other places in the
vicinity of that city, some of which have not suffered before since
the new development of the disease in Mesopotamia, three or four years
ago. The progress of the epidemic in and about Bagdad last year shows
that each year since its reappearance in that district it has covered
a wider area, and it will be remembered that last year it crossed the
Turco-Persian frontier, and broke out at Shuster, in Khuzistan. From
the phenomena of the epidemic to this period it was feared, especially
by the physicians on the spot, that, if it should recur in the present
year, it must be expected to extend over a still wider area, and show
itself in even a more aggravated form than had yet been observed. This
opinion is concurred in by Surgeon-Major Colville, the medical officer
attached to the British Embassy at Bagdad, and is expressed in his
official report, on the subject of the last and previous year's
outbreak.
The Turco-Russian struggle in Asia Minor, and the massing of Persian
troops on the western frontier of that country, add an additional and
most grave factor to this ominous intelligence.
It has been so long since Christian Europe has suffered from this
terrible disease that most medical men have never seen a case, and,
indeed, for awhile, epidemiologists flattered themselves it had "died
out." They yet say that a thorough system of sanitation will certainly
check its advance.
Let us hope so; for of all pestilences which have ever scourged
humanity, and desolated empires, none approach in magnitude those of
the plague. Under the name of "the black death," it fills, as Hirsch
remarks, one of the darkest pages in the history of the human race.
It devastated every known country of the earth, and penetrated to the
remotest mountain hamlets and granges, sometimes sweeping away in a
few days every inhabitant, leaving not one to remember the name or to
inherit the goods of the family or the village. Long years afterward,
travelers would come upon these unknown villages, the houses rotting,
the bones of the plague-stricken owners bleaching in the rooms and
streets, and no one to say who they had been.
As an epidemic disease, it no doubt spreads from India, that mother of
pestilence, where, in the province of Kutch and Guzerat, it is found
as an endemic of great malignancy. Far more fatal in its historical
appearance than the cholera, it is well that the medical mind of
Europe is on the alert to meet its approach with the most energetic
measures; and should they fail, it will devolve upon us to lose
no time in taking up the defensive in the most energetic
manner.--_Medical and Surgical Reporter._
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