The numbers who perished in this violent plague are so variously reported that nothing certain can be said concerning it. Dr. Morton says that upwards of forty thousand died; but from the foregoing accounts it is evident that this calculation must be prodigiously underrated. The journalist indeed gives strong reasons for believing that all the accounts of the numbers who perished were much below the truth. He thinks that an hundred thousand at least must have fallen victims to it; and if his own assertion be true, that thirty thousand died in the last three weeks, we cannot suppose but that three times that number died in the course of the twelvemonth that the disease lasted; which would fix the calculation at 120,000. This great mortality however was soon forgot; as soon as the danger was over, the ravages it had committed were no longer an object of terror. The disease had its usual effect, viz. increasing the desire of the sexes for each other. “They had the courage (says Dr. Hodges) now to marry again, and betake to the means of repairing the past mortality; and even women before deemed barren were said to prove prolific; so that, although the contagion had carried off, as some computed, about one hundred thousand, after a few months their loss was hardly discernible.”
No IV.
Account of the Plague at Marseilles in 1720:—From the Periodical Publications of the time.
SO much hath been said concerning this plague, in the first part of this treatise, that no particular detail is requisite here. In its symptoms it differed little if any thing from the plague of London, described in the former number. Many died without any previous sickness, and, while the distemper continued severe, few outlived the third day; and so infectious was its nature, that one person in a family was seldom attacked without its successively attacking all the rest. The bodies were said to putrefy in 24 hours. Very considerable sums of money were collected here, as well as in London. The conduct of the bishop on this melancholy occasion has been greatly celebrated by many; among others by Dr. Darwin, in his Botanic Garden, in the following lines:
“So when Contagion, with mephitic breath,
And wither’d Famine, urg’d the work of death;[217]
Marseilles’ good Bishop, London’s gen’rous Mayor,
With food and faith, with med’cine and with prayer,
Rais’d the weak head, and stay’d the parting sigh,
Or with new life relum’d the swimming eye.
No V.
Account of the Plague in Syria, Cyprus &c.—From Dr. Patrick Russel’s Treatise.
THIS plague was preceded by violent cold, famine, and earthquakes. In 1759 it began in Egypt, having been imported in a vessel from Constantinople. from Alexandria in Egypt it was brought by some Jews to Saffat, a village in Syria, near Aleppo, which had suffered much by the earthquake; which last was for some time thought to have been the cause of the distemper; but, when its nature was really discovered, they comforted themselves with the thoughts that an Egyptian plague was less to be dreaded than one which came from the northward.
The distemper had been introduced into Cyprus as early as April 1759, by a vessel from Constantinople, wrecked on the coast; and, having thus got a footing in Egypt, Syria and Cyprus, its progress was marked with the usual mortality. In Egypt the Europeans in Cairo remained in confinement till the middle of July; a space considerably longer than usual. Next year they shut up on the 9th of March, but were released on the 24th of June. The distemper raged in the city with such fury during 1759 and 1760, that in the two years four hundred and fifty thousand were computed to have perished; a number, however, which Dr. Russel thinks must have been exaggerated. Cairo had been free from plague during the whole of this century before, except in the year 1736, when the distemper raged with such violence that ten thousand were said to have perished in one day. It was supposed to have been brought from Upper Egypt. In Cyprus it broke out at the village of Limsol, where it destroyed four hundred people. During the hot months of July, August and September the infection showed itself so little that it was thought to have been extinguished; but in October it not only reappeared in the places where it had before showed itself, but invaded Nicosia, the capital of the island. Endeavours were used, by burying the dead bodies in the night, to conceal the existence of the distemper; but this soon became impracticable. Towards the end of January, 1760, it raged so dreadfully in this city that the Mahometans were enjoined to use prayers and processions to avert the wrath of Heaven. The crowds brought together on this occasion spread the distemper still more wide, and in the following month its ravages began at Larnica, a small town considerable for its trade, and which, though alarmed, had hitherto kept free, even though infected persons had been freely admitted. Here it raged with uncommon malignity, insomuch that few of those recovered that were infected during the month of March. It continued to prevail till the month of April, when it spread to the very eastern extremity of the island, into the province of Carpass; a thing hitherto unknown.
Two examples of apparent insusceptibility are related; one was a young Greek, whose constant employment was, to nurse the sick, and assist at the burials; the other, a Greek woman, who, having with great affection nursed her husband and two daughters who died of the plague, continued with admirable courage to expose herself in assisting the sick in the neighbourhood.