THE PLAGUE. The Plague.-Adapted from N. Poussin. "Behold, cometh on with fearful haste, MRS. SIGOURNEY. ted by either the sword, or, the "pestilence that walketh in darkness." We give below, in as brief and perspicuous a form as possible, an account of these various visitations, including that of the cholera, whose effects are still in vivid remembrance in the minds of all. We presume that every reader of the Family Magazine is also (or should be) an attentive reader of the Scriptures, and hence we will pass over the chronicle of the ten plagues of Egypt, in the time of Moses, and notice those which are record ed by the profane historian. From an old scrapbook lying before us, we copy the following chronological statement of the most remarkable plagues that have occurred within twenty centuries past. SCOURGES of every character, whether bearing the features of either war, pestilence, or famine, must, when viewed in a proper light relative to the population of the globe, be regarded as necessary evils. They are evils to the immediate victims, but benefits to the general mass; for, were it not for some wholesale process (if we may so speak) by which depopulation might be effected, the earth would soon teem with superabundant millions, heirs of want and misery. It is with man as with other animals, propagation far outstrips in numbers in a given time dissolution, and A. D. 762 Great plague in England. hence, wars and pestilence are but the swifter ministers of death, and instead of a single victim, offer up whole hecatombs upon the altar of dreadful necessity. If we cast a glance over the vast page of the Past, we shall see frequent impressions of the foot of the destroying angel, where whole provinces and kingdoms have been desolaVOL. VII.-17 B. C. 78 Plague in Rome, 10,000 died in one day. 67 A great plague over all the known world. 777 Again, 34,000 died. 778 66. 954 Plague in Scotland, forty thousand died. 1025 Plague in England. 1111 66 very severe; attacked men, 1594 1604 died. 30,000 50,000" one fourth of the inhabitants 1611 Plague in Constantinople; 200,000 1631 Plague in London; 35,000 died. 1743 Plague at Messina. 1773. Plague at Bassorah in Persia; 80,000 1784 Plague at Smyrna; 20,000 died. 1791 Plague at Alexandria. 1792 Plague in Egypt; 800,000 died. neys and stages, making destruction its only business, and sparing neither island, cave, nor top of mountain, where mankind inhabited; for it leaped over a country, returning afterward (like the cholera) it left it no cause to rejoice above its fellows. It began still at the seacoast and thence went to the island parts. In the second year of its progress it arrived at Constantinople, about the middle of the spring, where it was the fortune of Procopius then to reside. Apparitions of spirits in all shapes human, were seen by many, who thought the man they met struck them in some part of the body, and so soon as they saw the spirit they were seized with the disease. At first when they met them they repeated divine names, and fled into churches, to no purpose. Afterward they were afraid to hear their friends call them, locking themselves up in their chambers, and stopping their ears. Some dreamed they saw such sights; others that they heard a voice tell them they were enrolled among the number of those appointed to die. But most without warning became feverish suddenly; their bodies changed not color; nor were hot; the fever being so remiss till evening that neither the patient nor physician, by his pulse, could apprehend any danger. Yet to some the same day, to others the next, or many days after, arose a bubo, either in the groin, the armpit, under the ear, or in other parts. These were the general symptoms which happened alike to all the visited persons. There were others different; whether made so by the diversity of bodies, or by the will and pleasure of Him that sent the distemper our author cannot say. Some were seized with drowsi ness and slumbering, others with a sharp distrac1804-6 Plague in Spain; great number died. tion. The slumberers forgot all things; if they 1817 to '32 inclusive, Cholera carried off in were looked to, some would eat; some that were various parts of the earth, an esti-neglected would starve to death. Those who mated aggregate of 100,000,000 were distracted were vexed with apparitions, cryof persons. ing there were men to kill them; and running The following is an account of the great plague keepers were pitied as much as they themselves. away: being so troublesome and unruly that their in the time of Justinian, about the commence-The physicians or others caught the disease by ment of the sixth century. It is given by an old English writer, on the authority of Procopius, who was an eye-witness of the terrible account. ACCOUNT OF THE GREAT PLAGUE IN THE TIME OF JUSTINIAN. sea.. touching sick or dead bodies; many strangely continuing free, though they tended and buried infected persons, and many catching it they knew not how, and dying instantly. Many leaped into the water, though not from thirst; and some into the Some without slumbering or madness, had This was a plague which almost consumed their bubo gangrened, and died with extreme mankind; of which Procopius concludes there pain; which doubtless also happened to those was no other cause than the immediate hand of who had the phrensy, though being not themGod himself. For it neither came upon one part selves, they understood it not. Some physicians of the world alone, nor in one season of the year; hereupon conceiving the venom and head of the whence subtle wits, as he saith, might make pre- disease to lie in those plague sores, found a huge tensions. It inflicted the whole world, and all carbuncle growing inward. Such whose bodies conditions of men, though of never so contrary a were spotted with black pimples, the bigness of a nature and disposition; sparing no constitution lentile, lived not a day. Many died vomiting nor age. The difference of men as to their places blood. Some that were given over by the most of dwelling, diet, complexions, inclinations, &c., eminent physicians, unexpectedly recovered; oth did no good in this disease. Some it took in sum-ers, of whose recovery they thought themselves mer, some in winter, and others in other seasons. perfectly secure, suddenly perished. No cause of It began among the Egyptians in Pelusium, and this sickness could be reached by man's reason. spread to Alexandria, with the rest of Egypt, one Some received benefit by bathing, others it hurt. way and the other to those parts of Palestine Many died for want of relief, others escaped with which border upon Egypt. Thence it travelled out it. In a word, no way could there be found to the utmost bounds of the world, as by set jour-of preservation, either by preventing the sickness THE FAMILY MAGAZINE. or of mastering the disease, no cause appearing pits, where swellings were produced, which broke Before the pestilence invaded Christendom, it Probably the most desolating scourge on record is that of the great plague in the fourteenth century. It is thus described by a newspaper writer of our day: : This dreadful pestilence, like the cholera, made its first appearance in the East. It arose in China, Tartary, India, and Egypt, about the year 1345. It was ascribed by the contemporary writers, Mezeray and Giovanni Vellani, to a general corruption of the atmosphere, accompanied by the appearance of millions of small serpents and other venomous insects, and, in other places, quantities of huge vermin, with numerous legs and of a hideous aspect, which filled the air with putrified exhalations. The plague extended its ravages from India into the more western parts of Asia, into Egypt, Abyssinia, and thence into the northern parts of Africa. It proceeded over Asia Minor, Greece, and the islands in the Archipelago, almost depopulating the regions over which it stalked. It may literally be said to have decimated the world, even though we were to take this term as implying the destruction of nine in place of one out of ten. According to Mezeray and other writers, where it was most favorable, it left one out of three, or one out of five; but where it raged most violently, it scarce left a fifteenth or twentieth person alive. Some countries, partly by the plague, and partly by earthquakes, were left desolate. Giovanni Villani says that in a part of Mesopotamia, only some women survived, who were driven by extremity and despair to devour one another. The plague appears to have stayed five or six months in one place, and then to have gone in search of fresh victims. Its symptoms are minutely described by many writers, and appear to have been the same in every country it visited. It generally appeared in the groin, or under the arm From Greece the plague passed into Italy. The Venitians having lost one hundred thousand souls, fled from their city, and left it almost uninhabited. At Florence, sixty thousand persons died in one year. France next became exposed to its ravages. At Avignon the mortality was horrible. In the strong language of Stow, people died bleeding at the nose and mouth; so that rivers ran with blood, and streams of gore issued from the graves and sepulchres of the dead. At last this fearful scourge began to be felt in England. About the beginning of August, 1348, it appeared in the seaport towns on the coast of Dorset, Devon, and Somersetshire, whence it proceeded to Bristol. The people of Gloucestershire Thence it spread to Oximmediately interdicted all intercourse with Brisover Gloucestershire. tol, but in vain. The disease ran, or rather flew ford; and about the first of November reached London. Finally, it spread itself all over England, scattering everywhere such destruction, that out of the whole population hardly one person in ten was left alive. Incredible as this statement may appear, it seems borne out by the details of contemporary annalists. In the churchyard of Yarmouth seven thousand and fifty-two persons, who died of the plague, were buried in one year. In the city of Norwich ninety-seven thousand eight hundred and seventy-five persons died in six months, between the first of January and the first of July. In the city of York the mortality was equal. We find no general statement of the total amount of The dead were thrown into the mortality in London; but there are details suffiyond imagination. cient to show that it must have been horrible beNo attempt pits, forty, fifty, or sixty into one; and large fields were employed as burial places, the churchyards being insufficient for the purpose. was made to perform this last office with the usual care and decency. Deep and broad ditches were laid in rows and covered with earth, and pro surmounted with another layer of bodies, which | ward enforced obedience to it, by severe measures also was covered. Sir Walter Manny (whose both against masters and laborers. name is so well known from his connexion with The last dregs of this calamity were drained the affecting incident of the surrender of Calais by that unfortunate race the Jews. A belief to Edward III.) benevolently purchased and ap- spread over several countries, that they had propriated a burial-ground, Smithfield, in which duced the pestilence by poisoning the wells and single place more than fifty thousand people were fountains; and in many places they were massaburied. cred in thousands by the infuriated populace. In several parts of Germany, where this persecution chiefly raged, the Jews were literally exterminated. Twelve thousand of them were murdered in the single city of Mentz; and multitudes in the extremity of their despair, shut themselves up in their houses and consumed themselves, and their families and property with fire. such atrocities, in a barbarous age may well be The extent of imagined when we remember the outrages which were produced by the cholera panic, only a few months ago, in some parts of the continent. The mortality fell chiefly upon the lower classes of society, and among them principally on old men, women and children. It was remarked that not one king or prince of any nation died of the plague; and of the English nobility and people of distinction, very few were cut off by it. Among the higher orders of the church the deaths were rare; but such havoc was made among the inferior clergy, that numbers of churches were left wholly void, and without any one to perform divine service, or any offices of religion. At the same time, all suits and proceedings in the courts of justice ceased; and the sitting of parliament was intermitted for more than two years. This terrible visitation was everywhere attended by the total dissolution of the bonds of society. The pestilence extended into Wales, where it raged violently; and soon afterward, passing into Ireland, it made great havoc among the English settled in that island. But it was remarked that the native Irish were little affected, particularly those that dwelt in hilly districts. Though the pestilence ceased in England in 1329, yet the destroying angel continued his longer, marks of his presence remaining on recprogress through other regions for several years ord down to the year 1362. The world has suffered no similar visitation since; nor does its older history afford any instance of a calamity of the same kind, equally extensive and destructive. Even the pestilence, so eloquently described by Gibbon, which ravaged a great part of the Roman empire, seems to have been inferior in magnitude; and the famous plague of Athens was confined within a still narrower compass. In almost every other memorable instance of the plague, it has been limited to a particular district, or even a particular city. As to the Scots, they are said to have brought the malady on themselves. Taking advantage of the defenceless state of England, they made a hostile irruption with a large force into the country. But they had not proceeded far, when the calamity which they courted, and so well deserv-ble plague, the main force of which was spent In 1666, England was again visited by a terri ed from their ungenerous conduct, overtook them. They perished in thousands; and, in attempting of it, but the most graphic is the following, taken upon London. De Foe has given a vivid picture to return home, they were overtaken before they could reach the border, by a strong body of English, who routed them with great slaughter. The remnant carried the disease into Scotland, where its ravages were soon as destructive as in the southern ports of the island.. from a work called "Rothelan." The author says: In its malignity it engrossed the ills of all other maladies, and made doctors despicable. Of a poEarly in the year 1349, the plague began to armories, and was itself the death of every other tency equal to death, it possessed itself of all his abate in England, and by the month of August it mortal distemper. The touch, yea, the very sight had entirely disappeared. Its consequences, how of the afflicted was deadly; and its signs were so ever, continued for sometime to be severely felt. sudden, that families seated in happiness at their During the prevalence of the disease, the cattle, meals, have seen the plague-spots begin to redfor want of men to tend them, were allowed to den, and have wildly scattered themselves for wander about the fields at random, and perished ever. in such numbers as to occasion a great scarcity. it. Mothers, when they saw the signs of infection The cement of society was dissolved by Though the fields, too were covered with a plenti- on the babes at their bosom, cast them from them ful crop of corn, much of it was lost for want of with abhorrence. Wild places were sought for hands to reap it and gather it in. The scarcity of shelter; some went into ships and anchored afar hands naturally produced excessively high wages. off on the waters. But the angel that was pourThis gave occasion to the act of the twenty-ing out the vial had a foot on the sea as well as fifth of Edward III., known by the name of the on the land. No place was so wild that the quickStatute of Laborers; which, on account of "the sighted pestilence did not discover; none could insolence of servants, who endeavored to raise fly that it did not overtake. their wages upon their masters," ordained that they should be contented with the same wages mankind, and was shovelling them into the sepIt was as if Heaven had repented the making of and liveries which they had been accustomed to ulchre. Justice was forgotten, and all her courts receive in the twentieth year of the king. In deserted. The terrified jailers fled from the felspite of this statute high wages continued to be ons that were in fetters the innocent and the given by people who preferred doing so to losing guilty leagued themselves together, and kept the grains and other fruits of the earth, till Ed-within their prison for safety-the grass grew in the market places; the cattle went moaning up and the course of two years, it traversed the whole down the fields the rooks and ravens came into peninsula of India, containing six hundred thouthe town and built their nests in the mute bel-sand square miles. It extended eastward to Siam, fries:-silence was universal save when some in- and destroyed forty thousand persons in the capifected wretch was seen clamoring at a window. tal of that kingdom. It visited Sumatra, Java, and Borneo, and in 1820 reached Canton in Chi For a time, all commerce was in coffins and shrouds; but even that ended. Shrifts there were none; churches and chapels were open; but nei-na, and ravaged the Philippine islands. Thus, in ther priest nor penitent entered; all went to the three years it spread over a surface of one hundred charnel house. The sexton and the physician and twenty millions of square miles. In 1821, it were cast into the same wide and deep grave; spread from Bombay toward Europe, by the way the testator, and his heirs and executors were of the Persian gulf. In Bassora it carried off hurled from the same cart into the same hole to- nearly eighteen thousand persons in the short gether. Fire became extinguished, as if its element too had expired; the seams of the sailor space of fourteen days. It then branched off— less ships yawned to the sun. Though doors were one portion ravaging Astracan and the other layopen and coffers unwatched, there was no theft ;ing waste Arabia, Mesopotamia and Syria. In all offences ceased, and no crime, but the univer-November, 1822, it reached the shores of the sal wo of the pestilence, was heard among men. Mediterranean, and in 1823 it occupied two conThe wells overflowed, and the conduits ran to spicuous points on the frontier of Europe; yet it waste; the dogs banded themselves together, was not till 1830, seven years afterward, that it having lost their masters, and ran howling over made much ravages. During that time it alterall the land; horses perished of famine in their nately appeared and disappeared, at points in stalls; old friends but looked at one another when they met, keeping themselves far aloof; little the Russian army, having prior to that, spread Asia. In 1831 it was introduced into Poland by children went wandering up and down, and numbers were seen dead in all corners. Nor was it over sixteen thousand square miles of the Rusonly in England that the plague so raged. It trav-sian empire in two months. From Poland it spread elled over a third part of the whole earth, like to various European cities, and finally attacked the shadow of an eclipse, as if some dreadful London, where, in one day, more than one thouthing had interposed between the world and the sand persons were attacked, and about four hunsun, the source of life. dred died. In the spring of 1832, it first made its At that epoch, for a short time, there was si- which two places it attacked almost simultaneappearance in America, at Montreal and Quebec, lence, and every person in the streets, for a moment stood still, and London was as dumb as a ously. The mortality there was very great. It churchyard. Again the sound of a bell was heard moved gradually southward, and in July it com-for it was that sound, so long unheard-which menced its ravages in New York eity, in the city arrested the fugitive multitude, and caused their of Albany, and several villages on the Hudson silence. At the third toll, a universal shout arose, river. Philadelphia, Baltimore, and other cities as when a herald proclaims the tidings of a great farther south and west were visited by it, but it battle won, and then there was a second silence. passed over this country lightly when compared The people fell on their knees, and with an- to its dreadful havoc in the old world. New York thems of thankfulness rejoiced in the dismal sound was visited more severely than any other city in of that tolling death-bell; for it was a signal of the plague being so abated that men might again the Union. From July third till August twentymourn for their friends, and hallow their remains ninth, during which time the board of health made with the solemnities of burial. daily reports, about three thousand persons died in that city by cholera. In 1834 it again appeared, but limited in extent and virulence. * Constantinople, Smyrna, Alexandria, and other eastern cities, in their respective vicinities, are frequently visited by plagues, at the present age, but they have been very circumscribed in comparison to those before described. Perhaps the most extensive and desolating scourge which has swept over the earth since the great pestilence of the fourteenth century, is the cholera, which, for about fifteen years, committed dreadful ravages in various districts in Asia, Europe and America. Like nearly all of the other great pestilences, the cholera first made its appearance in Asia. It first broke out at Jessore, about one hundred miles from Calcutta, in August, 1817. It reached Calcutta in September, and in It has been estimated that during fifteen years, nearly one hundred millions of persons perished by the cholera, of which vast number, Indostan gave a quota of thirty-five millions! THE SEVENTH PLAGUE OF EGYPT. BY REV. GEORGE CROLY. 'Twas morn-the rising splendor rolled A dazzling ring round Pharaoh's throne. |