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]
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]
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.
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]
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.