Other distempers, called by the general name of Epidemics, have at different times infected whole cities, and even overspread extensive regions; but these, though sometimes very fatal, have always been found so much inferior to the distemper of which we treat, that, on a comparison, we may justly say, though epidemics have slain their thousands, the true plague has slain its ten thousands. In speaking of the destructive ravages of epidemics, we may count the dead by tens, by hundreds, or by thousands; but in the true plague, always by thousands, by myriads,[2] or by millions. Procopius, when speaking of a plague which desolated the world in his time, compares the number of the dead to the sand of the sea; and Mr. Gibbon, who attempts to specify, thinks they might amount to an hundred millions;[3] and I cannot help being of opinion, that the destruction generally occasioned by violent plagues, amounts to about one half of the population; the reasons for which opinion will be given in the course of this work. In all violent plagues, we hear of the dead being left unburied; of their being cast into pits, &c. But if we wish to make any gross comparison between the destructive power of the true plague, and that of any other violent epidemic, we cannot, perhaps, have a better instance than that which took place at Bassorah (a city on the confines of Persia) in the years 1773 and 1780.[4] In the former of these years that city was visited by the true plague; and in the latter, by an epidemic remittent fever. The fever was most violent in its kind, and destroyed twenty-five thousand in the city and neighbourhood; but the true plague, no fewer than two hundred and seventy-five thousand in the same place. Supposing the two computations therefore to be equally exact, we must calculate this plague to have been eleven times more deadly than the epidemic. If therefore the ingenious classifiers, in modern times, have brought into alliance the plague with other epidemic diseases, and characterised the former from the latter; we may justly say, that they have fallen into the same error with other naturalists, who characterise the superior from the inferior; the lion from the cat, not the cat from the lion. As to the remedies applied in these diseases, doubtful in epidemics, they so universally fail in the true plague, that, notwithstanding the improved state of medicine, we may yet say, it stands among diseases, in a great measure, like a giant without any champion to oppose; like a poison without any antidote.
In this unhappy predicament, the breaking out of a plague, in any city or country, proves a most distressing calamity, not only on account of the numbers destroyed by the disease itself, but by reason of the bonds of society being loosed; so that humanity gives way to terror; children are abandoned by their parents, and parents by their children; every thing wears the appearance of ruin and desolation; while, in too many instances, avarice urges on the unprincipled to rapine, or even to murder. Nor are the cruel modes of prevention, sometimes practiced even by the authority of the magistrate, less abhorrent to humanity, then the lawless outrages of the thief or murderer. Instances of all this will appear in the course of the work; the following are so remarkable, that I cannot help inserting them in this place. In the great plague at Marseilles, in 1720, the town being almost deserted, and few choosing to venture into it, “three sea-captains, and some hundreds of sailors, having the courage to enter the city, from the sea-side, found therein a gang of murderers, who made it their business to destroy people seized with the plague, and to plunder their houses. The ringleader of them, named Rouanne, a gunsmith, was broken alive upon the wheel, and forty others were hanged. Rouanne owned that he had killed a thousand persons. There were found, upon one of the murderers, jewels to the value of more than thirty thousand livres.”[5] During the time of this public calamity, four men, who came from Marseilles to Aix, were shot by order of the parliament, lest they should have brought the infection along with them.[6] Even this is not equal to what Mr. Howard informs us was practiced in a hamlet of Dalmatia, where, the plague having raged with such violence, that only two or three remained; the neighbouring magistrates ordered these miserable survivors to be shot. At such prices will people buy a precarious, nay, an imaginary, safety. In short, what Mr. Gibbon says of the situation of people in the time of violent earthquakes, will also, in a great measure, hold good in the time of pestilence, or any great public calamity. “Instead of the mutual sympathy which might comfort and assist the distressed, they dreadfully experience the vices and passions which are released from a fear of punishment; the houses are pillaged by intrepid avarice, revenge embraces the moment and selects the victim: while [7]vengeance frequently overtakes the assassin or ravisher in the consummation of his crimes.”
Whether the world hath been in the same predicament ever since the human race began to multiply, or whether plagues have originated at some remote period, is a question not easily determined. It is certain that, as far as histories go, they give us accounts of plagues; much less frequent indeed in very ancient times than in those which followed; but the compass of historical knowledge is narrow. There are no authentic histories of any nation previous to the termination of those of the Old Testament. Where sacred history ends, profane history begins. The fabulous period affords many accounts of wars, heroes, giants, and monsters, but scarce any of plagues. Diodorus Siculus indeed makes mention of a plague which happened in Greece, after the flood of Deucalion; and which, he says, was occasioned by the general corruption of vegetables, &c. consequent on the flood. Deucalion’s flood is supposed to have been nearly cotemporary with the departure of the Israelites from Egypt; so that, if there is any truth in the relation of Diodorus, it is not improbable that some of the Egyptian plagues might have spread into Greece. We are likewise told of a pestilence at Athens in the time of Theseus;[8] but all the accounts of these times are so uncertain, and so much involved in fable, that little or no dependence can be placed on any of them.
The first distinct account we have of plagues of any kind, then, is in the book of Exodus, where we are told of many heavy judgments sent upon the Egyptians because of their disobedience. Before this, indeed, we read of plagues sent on the king of Egypt, for having taken Abraham’s wife; but as these fell only upon the king and his household, we cannot suppose any thing like a general pestilence to have taken place among the people. In like manner did it happen to Abimelech, king of Gerar, on the same account. All the women belonging to the king’s household were rendered barren for a time; but we hear of nothing happening to the nation at large. Again, when Moses and Aaron went in before Pharaoh, they said to him, “Let us go and sacrifice to the Lord our God; lest he fall upon us with the sword, or with pestilence.” This shews indeed that both Moses and Pharaoh knew that such a thing as pestilence existed, or might exist; but it cannot prove that the disease we now call the plague or pestilence commonly took place among nations in those days as it has done since. Even among the plagues inflicted upon the Egyptians by the hand of Moses and Aaron, we find only two that can be supposed to have any similarity to the disease we now call the plague; viz. the boil, and the destruction of their first born. The former may have been pestilential buboes; the latter also may have been the effect of a most malignant pestilence; such as, in the beginning of it, is said frequently to kill suddenly, as by lightning; but whether it was so or not, we cannot now determine.
In the history of Job, who is supposed to have been cotemporary with Moses, we have a case more in point. The boils, with which he was covered, are by Dr. Mead supposed to have been the small pox; though in the true plague the body is sometimes covered with gangrenous pustules, constituting a disease still more dangerous and painful than the small pox; but whatever the disease of Job was, we may reasonably conclude, that in his time there was none similar to it commonly existing among mankind.
After the departure of the Israelites from Egypt, we find frequent mention of a plague as a disease commonly to be met with; but it was always that of leprosy; those destructive plagues, which might be supposed to resemble the disease we now call by that name, being all miraculous. Concerning the prevalence of the leprosy among the Jews, Diodorus says that they “were driven out of Egypt as impious, and hateful to the gods; for their bodies being overspread and infected with the itch and leprosy, (by way of expiation) they got them together, and, as profane and wicked wretches, expelled them out of their coasts.” This he tells us was a reason given to one of the kings of Syria why he should exterminate the Jews. In another place our author gives the following account of the origin of the Jewish nation. “In ancient times there happened a great plague in Egypt, and many ascribed the cause of it to God, who was offended with them. For there being multitudes of strangers of several nations who inhabited there, who used foreign ceremonies, the ancient manner of worship was quite lost and forgotten. Hence the natural inhabitants concluded, that unless the strangers were driven out, they should never be freed from their miseries. Upon which they were all expelled,” &c. He then tells us that some of them came into Greece under the conduct of Danaus and Cadmus; but the greater part entered Judea, then quite desert and uninhabited. Their leader “was one Moses, a very wise and valiant man,” &c.[9]
The allusion, in this last passage of Diodorus, to the plagues of Egypt, mentioned in Exodus, is manifest; and it is equally manifest, that the Egyptians themselves, as well as the sacred historian, owned them to be miraculous. Here, however, let it be remarked, that, though these, and others inflicted on the Israelites, were miraculous, we are not from thence to conclude that they took place without the intervention of natural causes. On the contrary, in speaking of the plagues of Egypt, we are told, that when the locusts came, “the Lord sent a strong east wind, all that day and all that night; and when it was morning, the east wind brought the locusts.” In like manner “the Lord turned a mighty strong west wind, which took away the locusts, and cast them into the Red sea.” Again, when the sea itself was divided, “the Lord caused it to go back by a strong east wind all that night.” The Egyptians were witnesses to this; but, as they did not believe that the powers of nature had any superior, they could never be induced to think that any of the elements would take part in a dispute between two nations, or favour the one more than the other.
In diseases inflicted on the human body, we are assured that the powers of nature were as much employed as in the miracles already mentioned. When it was told David that the child born to him by Bathsheba should die, the infant was seized with a natural distemper, probably a fever, and died the seventh day. When Hezekiah was informed that he should die, he did not, any more than David had done, give himself up to despair; but used, for his recovery, such means as were in his power, viz. prayers to God; from whom, by the constitution of things under the Old Testament, he would receive a direct answer. And it is remarkable, that though the answer was favourable, yet the disease was not removed by any invisible power operating like a charm, but by the use of a remedy. It is plain therefore that this disease was occasioned by one natural power, and removed by another. The boil (for that was the distemper) was brought to maturity by a poultice of figs, and the king recovered.[10] If then the scripture informs us, that even where the Deity himself speaks, he has directed the use of a remedy, much more ought we to be diligent in the use of such as our feeble skill can suggest, in those cases where he leaves us entirely to the exercise of our own judgments. To sit down supinely, in case of a dangerous distemper, with a notion, that if God wills us to die we certainly shall die, in any use of natural means; and if he wills the contrary, that we shall as certainly recover, in any neglect of them; is a conduct equally unscriptural and absurd.
In the books of Moses we find the Israelites, in case of disobedience, threatened with the botch of Egypt; with terror, consumption, and the burning ague. From the name of this last we may reasonably suppose it to have been the same with the remitting fever of the East, which is attended with the most intolerable sensation of burning in the bowels; but whatever the nature of these diseases might have been, they certainly were not very common in the world at that time, or they would not have been threatened as extraordinary judgments. They were not the same with the pestilence; because we find, that after they had been threatened with fever, consumption, and extreme burning, it is added, “I will make the pestilence cleave unto thee:” as if it had been said, that the pestilence, which hitherto had appeared only on extraordinary occasions, should then become endemic, and never leave them. But, on the whole, the first account we have of any general plague, seems to be that which was inflicted on the Jews on account of the sin of their king in numbering the people. David was nearly cotemporary with the Trojan war; and Homer, in the first book of his Iliad, informs us, that a plague likewise took place in the camp of the Greeks; and that too for the sin of their king in carrying off the daughter of the priest of Apollo, and refusing to restore her at the entreaty of her father.
In comparing the account of the sacred historian with that given by Homer, we cannot help observing a striking similarity between them. Both plagues were inflicted on the people for the sin of their kings; both were miraculous; the one continued three days, the other nine. In both the Deity himself appeared: an angel brandished a drawn sword over Jerusalem; and Homer says, that, from the top of Olympus, Apollo shot his arrows into the Grecian camp. Lastly, both were stopped in a similar manner: David offered sacrifices to the true God; and Agamemnon returned Chryseis, his captive, to her father, the priest of Apollo, by whose prayers and sacrifices the plague was stopped. Hence it seems not impossible, that the story told by Homer, is only that of David, altered as he thought most proper for embellishing his poem; and that this was the first remarkable plague in the world.