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: