Plague : papers relating to the modern history and recent progress of Levantine plague / prepared from the time to time by direction of the president of the Local Government Board, with other papers ; sented to both House of Parliament by Command of Her Majesty.
- Radcliffe, Netten.
- Date:
- 1879
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Plague : papers relating to the modern history and recent progress of Levantine plague / prepared from the time to time by direction of the president of the Local Government Board, with other papers ; sented to both House of Parliament by Command of Her Majesty. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.
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![Cessation of Plague in Eu- rope, 1841. 1841-1844. Cessation in Stkia, Pales- tine, and Asia Minor, 1843. Cessation in Egypt, 1844. mencement of this diffusion, namely in 1839, plague disappeared from Constantinople, and two years after its cessation on the Bosphorus it died out in the European provinces of the Porte. While plague was thus becoming extinct in Europe, it again became actively diffusive in Egypt, Syria, and Palestine (1840-41.) The disease was apparently not less virulent in this diffusion than in previous diffusions, but except, probably, some dispersion into parts of Asia Minor, it did not spread beyond the countries named. With the termi- nation of this diffusion plague vanished from the East. No case of the disease is known to have occurred in. Syria, Palestine, and Asia Minor since 1843, nor in Egypt since 1844. Eor centuries Egypt and the countries lying to the east of the Mediterranean had been regarded as the birth-place of the several diffusions of plague which had spread over Europe. In these countries the disease lingered longest and was latest to disappear dmnng that gradual decrease of the area of prevalence, which observed in this country after the great outbreak of 1665, came to an end in Egypt with the apparent extinction of the disease, in 1844.* The Reap- pearance OF Plague. Western Arabia 1853. Bengazi, Tri- poli, 1858-59. Eourteen years after the cessation of plague in the countries where it is believed to have previously prevailed from time immemorial, the disease again appeared in the basin of the Mediterranean, within the province of Tripoli, the easternmost state of Barbary. During the interval no previous prevalence of plague had come to know- ledge, but it is now known (the fact having been ascertained in 1874) that plague had been present in the highlands of Western Arabia in 1853. In that year an outbreak took place in the mountainous region of the Assyr district, North Yemen, part it would seem of a wider diffusion of the disease in Arabia. The mere fact appears to have been alone ascertained during an inquiry made under the direction of the Ottoman Government relating to the appearance o i plague in the same district in 1874.t In 1858, about the middle of April, plague broke out in the province of Bengazi, E/Cgency of Tripoli, North Africa. This province (the ancient maritime region of Barca, including the Oyrenaica or Pentapolis), celebrated of old for the fertility of its highlands and of its littoral, affords pasturage for many flocks and herds and yields rich crops of grain, notwitlistanding an imperfect and partial cultivation of the soil. The population is chiefly nomadic, frequenting the higher grounds and the table-land of Merdj during the hot season, when the pasturage in the plains has been parched up and withered, and returning to the low-lying tracts after the autumnal rains, when they have become covered by luxuriant vegetation. The fixed population is princi- pally accumulated in the only two towns of the province, namely, Bengazi (bailt on the site of the former Berenice and more remote Hesperides), andDerna (built on the site of the former Darnis), each of which towns contains about 12,000 inhabitants. Villages formed by small groups of miserable huts exist on the httoral and in the the interior, and several Arab monasteries; and certain Arab tribes occupy cave dwellings. Plague, in 1858, first appeared in the province of Bengazi, in an Arab encampment consisting of 30 huts, pitched at the time eight hours distant from the town of Bengazi, in the plain of AmaUsgalen Eiddaar. The disease was next observed in the town of Bengazi at the beginning of May, and afterwards it spread throughout four of the five districts into which the province is divided, namely, Bengazi, Derna, Gharb, and Chark, affecting both the nomadic and the fixed populations. Derna was attacked at the close of May or beginning of June, the development of the malady there following upon an importation of a case from Bengazi; and Merdj, the chief place of the district of Gharb, a village situated on the Cyrenaic plateau, and having a fixed population of 100, together with a garrison of 100 soldiers, was attacked about the 15th June. The district of Auldja, which has a very scanty fixed population hving in the midst of sandy desert, escaped the outbreak. The disease was most prevalent and the loss of life from it was greatest during the year 1858, but it continued into the following year, disappearing from the towns of Bengazi and Derna in June 1859. The number of attacks which occurred is not * See as to prevalence of plague during the early part of the 19th century, Dr. Gavin Milroy's Sketch of the Geography, &c. of the Plague during the Present Century (the British and Foreign Medico-Chirurgical Review, Vol. XXXIII. (Vol. I. 1864), p. 463 ; also Hirsch's Handbuch des historisch-geographischen Patho- logic, Vol. I., p. 197. f See on this subject a letter of [the physician to the British Embassy, Constantinople, and British delegate to the Ottoman General Boaid of Health,] Dr. E. D. Dickson, p. 16.](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b24751388_0014.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
