During the year 1845, the blight among the potatoes spread rapidly through Germany, Holland, Belgium, the northern parts of France, and over the greater portion of England, Scotland, and Ireland. This pestilence re-appeared the year following, 1846. A phenomenon worthy of notice was observed during the prevalence of this disease,—to wit, the existence of a mist or fogs immediately previous to the blight in the crops. In Holland, a thick stinking mist, which extended very widely, was observed in 1845, antecedent to the potato blight. M. Petit states that it was generally remarked in France that the disease made its appearance after a fog. In England the same phenomenon was observed.
In the spring of 1845 remittent fever broke out on board the ‘Eclair,’ while on the coast of Africa; the first persons attacked being those who had been engaged in boat-service. The vessel at the time lay off the Sherbro’ river, and the boats had been employed for some time exploring its creeks, and those in the Seabar branch of that river. The disease continued to spread among the boats’ crews; and after a while those seamen who had not been out of the ship became subject to the fever, which committed such fearful ravages among them that at last the ‘Eclair’ was ordered home as a dernier ressort. The disease then presented all the characters of genuine yellow fever. On the voyage, the ‘Eclair,’ after having been refused pratique at Goree, put in at Boa Vista, one of the Cape de Verd Islands, where the crew were landed, and stayed some days; but the epidemic continued to seize its victims, and the crew consequently, both the sick and sound, were again received on board, and the vessel got under weigh for England. Before she reached Madeira, Captain Estcourt, Dr. M’Clure, and Mr. Hartmann, the assistant surgeon, died, Mr. Machonchy, the surgeon to the ship, expiring the day after. Mr. Sydney Bernard, assistant surgeon of the ‘Growler,’ having volunteered his services, was appointed in Mr. Machonchy’s place, and performed his duties to the last. On the arrival of this floating pest-house in England, pratique was refused, and the healthy, the sick, and the dying were all kept on board. The result was the loss of several more lives, the disease not ceasing until about a fortnight after her arrival at the Motherbank. Mr. Sydney Bernard and Lieutenant Isaacson, the officer in command, were among its latest victims. The deaths on board from the endemic, from first to last, amounted to seventy-four. Fever prevailed very extensively in Boa Vista, after the departure of the ‘Eclair,’ and was very fatal; great numbers of the inhabitants were attacked.
In 1846, during the march of the Mormon worshippers across the desert, on their road to the new state of Deseret or Utah, after their expulsion from Nauvoo, they were greatly afflicted by endemic disease, chiefly remittent and yellow fevers. In one camp alone, 31 per cent. suffered, and the road was marked throughout with the graves of those who perished. They also suffered much from a kind of strange scorbutic disease, which they named the ‘black canker,’ and which was frequently fatal.
At this time it was remarked, a few days before disease fastened on the potatoes, that a dense cloud, resembling a thick fog, overspread the entire country; it differed from a common fog in being quite dry and having a disagreeable odour.
To continue: this year and the following, 1847, epidemic remittent fever was prevalent in Scotland. In Glasgow it was noticed that a remarkable change had taken place in the epidemic constitution. Exanthematous typhus—a sort of continued fever, characterized along with other symptoms by an eruption over the body resembling measles, running a course on an average of twenty-one days, carrying off about 10 per cent.,—was supplanted by a remittent fever, sometimes attended with petechiæ, but not with the measly eruption: it was also often accompanied by jaundice. Epistaxis was very frequent; when the disease occurred in women about the menstrual period, the discharge was universally copious, and very many women in a state of pregnancy, who were seized with the malady, aborted; a crisis generally was formed on the seventh day; relapses were frequent,—in fact, almost invariable under any and every precaution: the mortality amounted to about 3½ per cent.; about 15,000 persons fell victims to this disease, principally those residing in the ill-ventilated and filthy parts of the town,—the poor and distressed. The smallness of the mortality compared with the severity of the symptoms, and the debility it left behind, was a matter of surprise. This malady appears to have been very similar to that which prevailed in Dublin in 1826. Rutty, in his diseases of Dublin during forty years, mentions several epidemics which resembled the malady at Glasgow. They occurred in 1740, 1745, 1764, and 1765. There is also some resemblance between this fever and that which prevailed in Dublin in 1816, as reported by Dr. Stokes.
In the early part of 1845 cholera prevailed with great violence along the banks of the Indus, and about the same period proved very destructive in Afghanistan. Thence it extended into Persia, traversing that country from east to west, spread northwards into Tartary, and southwards into Kurdistan, and also into the pashalic of Baghdad. In September it prevailed at Herat and Samarcand, and in the November following at Bokhara. The extreme malignancy of the disease may be understood by the description given of many of the cases. “Those who were attacked dropped suddenly down in a state of lethargy, and at the end of two or three hours expired without any convulsions or vomiting, but from complete stagnation of the blood, which no remedies could restore to circulation.”
During this period there took place in Kurrachee, near the mouth of the Indus, the most terrific outburst of the pestilence that can be conceived, which in the course of a few days swept off 8000 victims. The description given by an eye-witness of the scene at Kurrachee, as Dr. Gavin Milroy says (in his very excellent pamphlet on cholera), is so full of fearful and instructive interest, as regards some of the most striking characters of pestilential visitations, that we cannot withhold a brief account of its leading particulars:—
The heat had been intense during the first fortnight in June, but the station remained tolerably healthy. On Sunday, the 14th, the atmosphere was more than usually stagnant and oppressive; one correspondent who was present says, “The very heavens seemed drawn down upon our shoulders; the feeling was suffocating.” A dark portentous-looking cloud crept up the sky as the troops were proceeding to church, and a sudden gust of wind threatened the building: it passed away almost as suddenly as it came; and when the worshippers retired, the air was as still as when they assembled. At the same hour did the pestilence appear; before midnight nine soldiers of the 86th regiment were dead, and men began to be brought to the hospital in such numbers, that it was difficult to make arrangements for their reception; it was a fearful night. With morning, came the tidings that the pestilence was overspreading the town, and that fifty persons had already fallen victims to its deadly poison. How awful must have been the rapidity of the attack, when we learn that sometimes, within little more than five minutes, hale and hearty men were seized, cramped, collapsed, and dead! Men attending the burial of their comrades were attacked, carried to the hospital, and were themselves buried the next morning. Pits were dug in the churchyard, morning and evening; sewn up in their bedding, and coffinless, the dead were laid side by side, one service being read over all! For the next five days it raged with appalling fury; it then abated in its intensity, but continued to hover about the place for another week. Within less than a fortnight, 900 Europeans, including 815 fighting men, were swept away. Besides these, 600 native soldiers and 7000 of the camp-followers and inhabitants of the town had been hurried into eternity. About this time, a virulent fever raged at Sukkur, about 180 miles from Kurrachee, which proved fatal in a few hours. Hyderabad, intermediate between the two places, was visited almost immediately afterwards by cholera. Mr. Alexander Thom, surgeon of the 86th regiment, at the time of the explosion at Kurrachee, thus expresses himself: “I have witnessed disease of a severe and fatal kind, and cholera itself in an apparently grave form, but I never could have anticipated, even in India, its appearance in so appalling a shape as that in which it was recently developed in the 86th regiment: it burst forth almost literally like a thunder-clap, followed by a lethiferous blast, proving almost instantaneously fatal.”
A.D. 1846, fearful mortality from famine and epidemic pestilence occurred in Gallicia: during the first half-year, 1234 deaths occurred, and for the like period in the subsequent year the mortality was 5188! During this time the weather was distressingly hot in Canada, North America, the thermometer frequently standing 96° and 98°; numbers were carried off daily by fever. Epidemic cholera, after raging with very great violence for two years in Persia, towards the end of the summer of 1846, broke out at Tauris and Teheran, and during the autumn advanced to places nearer to the Russian frontiers. On the 16th of November, 1846, cases occurred at the village of Ialiany, and also in the same month at Leukoran; and it is worthy of remark, that these were the places first attacked in 1830. The disease also appeared at Bakrou, and advanced in December to Schêmakha and Derbent; and in the month of February, 1847, to the town of Konba. Its appearance at Ialiany and in the district of Talysch was marked with that malignity which for the most part characterizes the commencement of cholera. We observe at Ialiany a remarkable instance of the influence of the trade and locality tending to foster it, selecting for its victims those who had but recently recovered from the fever of the country: the cholera almost invariably carried off every one attacked, nine-tenths falling victims to the disease. In the localities of the trans-Caucasian provinces, the attacks became less violent, and without the towns the disease no longer presented a malignant type. Towards the end of February, it was supposed that the disease had ceased, but in the following month, March, it recommenced with redoubled violence, and in April spread destruction with fearful rapidity. Traversing the shores of the Caspian sea, it reached Tiflis in May. It also appeared in this month on the other side of the Caucasus, at Kizliar, whence, re-ascending the Terek, it penetrated to Mozdok, at the end of June to Piatigorsk and to Georgierk, and entered Staowpol in the first week of July.
From October, 1846, to June, 1847, there occurred in the Caucasus and trans-Caucasian provinces no less than 17,055 cases of cholera, of which 6318 died. Astrachan suffered greatly from cholera, great numbers of the inhabitants having been carried off, as was also the case in Moscow. From official accounts received from St. Petersburgh, it appeared the inhabitants of the western town Alexandrof were attacked with cholera, and also the district of Olgapol, in Podolia. The latter is about thirty miles distant from the Austrian frontiers.