On the bubonic plague / by Alex. R. Ferguson.

  • Ferguson, Alexander Robert, 1870-1920.
Date:
1897-1898
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the bubonic plague / by Alex. R. Ferguson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    [FROM THE PROGEEDIlfaS OF THE PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY OF GLASGOW.] On the Bubonic Plague. By Dr. Alex. R. Feegdson. [Read before the Society, 20th April, 1898.] In bringing a subject of this kind before the notice of this Society, I feel that it is one in which interest and concern are alike awakened—those calamitous events recently seen in India, in connection with the disease of which it treats, constituting 'its most emphatic claim on our consideration. Of the many epidemic forms of disease by which different parts of the world have been at one time or another dominated, to the extent almost of depopulation, none have been so long known, so strenuously guarded against, or so much dreaded, as that known as the Oriental or Bubonic Plague. Although evidence is not wanting that the disease had been known m certain parts of India and China practically from time immemorial, yet amongst the earliest records, the details of which are sufficient to enable the nature of the disease to be de- termined, must be mentioned those which refer to a pestilence occurring in Lybia, Syria, and Egypt in the third century b c It apparently made its appearance in Europe in the sixth century A D. when certain parts of the Roman empire were invaded by It. Indeed, it had not disappeared from Italy and its subordinate provinces until, by means of very widespread sources of infection the whole of Europe was submerged by what may be literally termed a tidal wave of death in the fourteenth century, whereby It is estimated that not less than 25,000,000 persons perished All are now agreed that the Black Death, or Great Mortality'^' as It was called in Southern Europe, which so completely over- casts the history of this century, is identical in its features with 1.71 ^'^^^^ present, though happdy on the wane, in Bombay. There is little doubt t T '^^ epidemic originated in China, though plague centres in India may have