Saint Augustine pointed to the fact that epidemics are caused by decomposing organic bodies.
Forestus reported many cases of malignant fever caused by the emanations of cadavers.
Ambrose Paré, the renowned French surgeon, in 1562 demonstrated that a malignant (pestilential) fever, then raging in L’Agenois, was due to the putrid vapors arising from a neighboring well into which many dead bodies, soldiers fallen in battle, had been thrown.
Raulin (Observ. de Med.) relates how the section of a corpse at Leicturm, in the plain of Armagnac, caused a frightful epidemic.
A terrible pestilence, which decimated especially the lower classes, was originated in Riorno (Auvergne) by the digging up of the ground of an old cemetery, done to beautify the city.
Jean Wolf, who reported upon an epidemic of malignant fever in 1731, attributed it to putrefying animal remains.
In 1752 a man who had died of small-pox 30 years ago was dug up in Chelwood, a village near London, England. He had been buried in an oaken coffin which, when taken up, was yet entire and could have been so removed from the grave. But because the grave-digger could not handle it properly he got impatient and beat in the cover of the casket with his spade, whereupon immediately a mephitic smell arose that filled the air to some distance. The corpse, which was to be deposited in a vault, had been a person of consequence, and therefore not only the inhabitants of his native village attended the exhumation, but a good many people from neighboring places. But a few days after 14 persons contracted small-pox, and within a short time the entire village was infected, only two individuals enjoying immunity because they had had the disease. Although the epidemic was of a light character, two persons died of it. All those in the surrounding villages who had been at the exhumation were also attacked by small-pox.
Riecke adduces analogous cases, and relates that the opening of a vault which contained a victim of small-pox was followed by the death of a workman and the infection of another person.
Maret is authority for the following statement: A fever, complicated by gastric and catarrhal disorders, was prevalent in 1773 at Saulieu, Burgundy; but few of those it attacked died. This was in the latter part of February. On the 3d of March, a corpulent body, a victim of the disease, was buried in the cathedral, and on the 20th of April following, very near to the first, that of a woman who, in child-bed, had succumbed to the fever. Maret reports that when the coffin was lowered into the vault, the ropes slipped from the grasp of the men who held them; the coffin fell to the ground and broke; a putrid fluid, that filled the church with a most nauseating odor, oozed from it. Of 170 persons who remained in the church from the time that the grave was opened until the conclusion of the ceremony, 149 were attacked by a malignant putrid fever, which, bearing many of the characteristics of the prevalent fever, was undoubtedly the result of the vitiation of the church.
The city of Tacna, Peru, was yearly visited at certain times by a pernicious fever, which caused many deaths. The cemetery was in the center of the city. Finally, the dead were buried outside of the city limits, and the fever disappeared.