Plague and pestilence in literature and art

by Sir Raymond Henry Payne Crawfurd

2. That dogs avoided the dead bodies, as a rule, but that, when they did not, they took the disease.

3. That other animals, which feed on carrion, and within the walls of Athens these can hardly have been other than rats and cats, and possibly pigs, were affected like the dogs.

There is no evidence as to the effect on cattle, horses, sheep, and goats, because all these had been removed to Euboea.

The phenomenon of the disappearance of birds of prey before and during outbreaks of epidemic pestilence has been asserted again and again in literature. Yet it is very doubtful if the observation rests on any sure evidence. Search has brought to light only one occasion on which the truth of the fact has been deliberately tested, and then it was directly contradicted. Russell says that at the commencement of the plague of Aleppo, in which true plague was ushered in by typhus, no desertion of birds was observed, and no mortality among cattle. The old-time fancy that pestilence engendered in the clouds distempered the atmosphere almost necessarily involved the presumption that the feathered inhabitants of the air would be the first to feel its ill effects. In the same way the belief that pestilence might reach the atmosphere in the exhalations from marshes, led to similar fables attaching themselves to the marsh-dwelling frog. Aristotle alludes to the increased number of frogs in pestilential years, and Bacon and Horstius repeat his statement. These children of the marsh are conceived of as products of its undue activity. Horstius went so far as to assert the same of snails.

Livy[212] clearly asserts the disappearance of vultures from Rome before and during the epidemic of 174 b.c. ‘Cadavera, intacta a canibus et vulturibus, tabes absumebat: satisque constabat, nec illo, nec priore anno, in tanta strage boum hominumque vulturium usquam visum.’ [Dead bodies rotted away, untouched by dogs and vultures: and it was generally agreed that no vultures were to be seen either in that or the preceding year in spite of so great a mortality of men and cattle.] In this instance, then, it was not that they scented death from afar and held aloof, but that they disappeared beforehand. If some undetected epizootic—say of rats—had preceded the outbreak among cattle and men, the vultures may well have perished at the outset from feeding on infected material.

Other authors extend the observation to birds in general, and not only to birds of prey, as though their affection was truly epizootic. Thus Schenkius[213] says that in the plagues of 1505 and 1522 birds deserted their nests and young ones. Goclenius says the same of the plague of 1612, and that they fell suddenly to the ground dead. Mercurialis says that Venice was deserted by birds in 1576, and Short repeats this of Dantzig in 1709. Diemerbroeck says that cage-birds died in the epidemics of 1635 and 1636, and Sorbait records the same fact of the Viennese pestilence of 1679. Most, if not all this succession of epidemics, were unquestionably true Oriental plague, with or without typhus.

At present there is very little evidence of any extensive affection of the lower animals by typhus. Mosler, many years ago, failed to communicate it to dogs by injecting fresh typhus blood into their veins, or by feeding them on fresh typhus excreta, although death with typhoid symptoms followed, when the blood and stools had first been allowed to decompose. In the last few years experimenters have succeeded in communicating the disease to various monkeys by the agency of lice, but dogs, rats, and guinea-pigs have hitherto proved refractory to infection.

On the other hand, there is abundant evidence of animal infection with Oriental plague. Epizootics among rats and cats are well known. Boccaccio asserted the susceptibility of pigs, and Michoud confirmed the observation in the Yunnan epidemic of 1893. Dogs, poultry, deer, cattle, monkeys, squirrels, and marmots have all been shown by various observers to be prone to contagion.

Before accepting the evidence of Thucydides as to the disappearance of birds as weighty evidence in favour of the presence of true plague, one must consider the state of the country district around Athens, devastated by fire and the sword, and denuded of all its stock, so as to offer no promise of sustenance to bird visitors. But even so, one is still confronted by his statement as to the domestic dogs, which are known to be susceptible to plague and not known to be susceptible to typhus.

Thucydides says that no one was attacked a second time, or if he were the result was not fatal. Immunity of this kind, comparatively complete, is alike characteristic of typhus and plague: the question is one that has provoked considerable controversy right down to modern times. Both Curschmann and Murchison are agreed as to the extreme rarity of relapses and reinfections in typhus: curiously, Murchison himself had two typical severe attacks.