Amulets of various kinds were extensively employed in the seventeenth century. In South Germany a common form was the so-called Pest Penny. These had on one face, as a rule, the figure of St. Benedict or St. Zacharias, and on the reverse some formula of exorcism.
Vienna[189] fell a victim to outbreak after outbreak of plague, but the experience gained in the visitation of 1679 enabled the authorities to stamp out the infection in 1691 and 1709, before it had grown out of hand. But in 1713 all preventive measures failed to check its spread. Then, in the month of May, processions and litanies were organized to the plague column. The Emperor Charles VI remained in Vienna, and pronounced a solemn vow in St. Stephan’s, that if the plague ceased he would erect a church as a thank-offering. Such was the origin of the Karlskirche. This church is a rich square edifice with a huge dome. It is the chef-d’œuvre of J. B. Fischer von Erlach, commenced in 1715. The ravages of the plague are portrayed in relief, by Stanetti, in the tympanum. Flanking the portico are two domed belfries, resembling Trajan’s column, 108 feet high, with reliefs from the life of S. Carlo Borromeo by Mader and Schletter. In March 1714, when the plague died out after a total mortality of 120,000, a thanksgiving Te Deum was sung in St. Stephan’s, at which the emperor was present. Two series of memorial coins were struck, the one showing the votive column, the other the church dedicated to S. Carlo Borromeo.
The Plague Regulations, published in separate form at Vienna at the time of this epidemic, give a good idea of current popular opinion as to the nature of plague. There was no lack of adherents for each belief of every preceding period. There were those who regarded it as a signal evidence of God’s displeasure. There were those who attributed it to poison in the air or food, generated in the stars and spread by the malice of grave-diggers for their own purposes. Even the Jews were incriminated. There were those who read its origin in the conjunction of certain stars. Others ascribed it to famines, to poisonous fumes set free by earthquakes, to comets, and even to dry seasons through the multiplication of insects. Come how it might, clouds taking the form of biers and funeral processions, noises in churchyards, and dreary sounds in the air foretold its coming. On infected bodies the virus was often visible as blue sulphurous fumes. There were clearly also some who conceived a natural origin. A doctor, named Gregorovius, dissected three dead bodies in search of the cause, but failed to find it. His intrepid zeal was duly rewarded by the Emperor and by the Faculty of Medicine in Vienna.
Conformably with the varying conceptions of cause, remedies were varied and multifarious. Some pinned their faith to a devout life, aided by processions and penitential sermons. Some lit fires to cleanse the air, at times adding sulphur. A host of herbs, chief among them Angelica, enjoyed repute as antipestilential remedies. The simple life appealed to some, purgatives and blood-letting to others.
But side by side with this ill-assorted medley of measures, a code of sanitary precautions had slowly grown up. Early notification by the doctors, quarantine of suspects and segregation of the sick, cleanliness and disinfection were all recommended and sedulously executed, and supplied in embryo the essential principles of modern sanitary science. Doctors were enjoined to keep sober, to fumigate themselves, and to wear silk or taffetas, to which the virus would not cling. We have arrived indeed at the parting of the ways, and henceforth the stream of medical science, polluted less and less by the surface waters of superstition, flows on clear and full in its appointed channel. The sun of science emerges at length from its protracted winter solstice.
CHAPTER XIII
In the year 1720 plague found its way to [Marseilles]. It was believed to have been brought by a ship, the Grand-Saint-Antoine, which arrived on May 25 from the Levant. As usual, the attempt was made to hush it up for the sake of trade. At the beginning of August something had to be done, so on the advice of two physicians, Sicard, father and son, it was decided to light bonfires throughout the city. For lack of firewood this was not done, but also for lack of faith, for it was found that despite their vaunted specific, the Sicards had fled the city. So sulphur was served out to the poor instead, wherewith to ‘perfume’ their houses.
As early as August 2 the Town Council found it necessary to adopt special measures to keep physicians and surgeons to their task. Accordingly, they decided that the city should pay them a fixed salary in place of fees from the sick, and allow them smocks of oiled cloth, and sedan chairs to carry them on their rounds. There are several illustrations extant of the [dress adopted by doctors] in the plague of Marseilles. The same dress, with trifling variations, was worn elsewhere in France, in Switzerland, and in Germany, and had originated in Italy. It is shown in an old Venetian woodcut of a.d. 1493, from the works of Joannes de Ketham (Fasciculus Medicinae, 1493). This woodcut shows a physician in a long overall, but wearing only a skull-cap on his head, visiting a plague patient in bed. He is accompanied by attendants who carry lighted torches, while he himself holds a medicated sponge before his mouth and nose, as he feels the pulse. Grillot figured the dress as the frontispiece of his Lyon affligé de la peste 1629, and Manget[190] has borrowed it from him. From his description it would seem that the mantle, breeches, shirt, boots, gloves, and hat were all of morocco leather. The beak attached to the mask was filled with aromatics, over which the air passed in respiration, and had an aperture for each eye, fitted with a disk of crystal.