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

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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$MEMORANDUM No. III.—1877 and part of 1878. {From the Report of the Medical Officer of the Local Government Board for 1877.) In two previous memoranda (the first of whicli will be found in the Report of the Medical Officer for 1875, p. 82 [p. 5 of these papers] ; and the second in the Report of the Medical Officer for 1876, p. 285 [p. 28 of these papers]) I have described the modern history of Levantine plague, and its progress to the close of the year 1876, and for part of the year 1877. In the present memorandum I propose to continue and complete the history of that progress for 1877 and for part of 1878, and to give an account of an outbreak of the bubonic plague of India (the Pali plague or Great- plague, mdhdmari) in 1876-77, including certain facts as to the probable existence of plague in Yunnan. Since the apparent cessation of plague in Egypt in 1844, after several centuries of prevalence there and in neighbouring countries, eight reappearances of the disease had been recorded in the Levant up to the close of 1874, namely: (1, 2), in Western Arabia, in 1853 and again in 1873-74; (3, 4), in the province of Bengazi, Tripoli, in 1858-59 and again in 1873-74; (5, 6), in Persian Kurdistan, in 1863 and again in 1871; and (7, 8), in Mesopotamia, in 1867 and again in 1873-74. The outbreak of 1873-74 in Mesopotamia was the beginning of a diffusion of plague in the districts bordering the lower courses of the Euphrates and Tigris, before the junction of the two rivers to form the Shat-el-Arab, which continued, with intervals of dormancy during the hot season, throughout 1874-75, 1875-76, and into 1877. Since the hot season of 1877 no information of the existence of plague in Mesopotamia has been received, and it would appear as if the diffusion which began in 1873 had then come to an end.* An offshoot of this diffusion, as it was believed at the time, occurred in 1876, in the towns of Shuster and Dizful and the surrounding districts, Khuzistan, south-western Persia. The outbreak of plague in the localities named was very fatal, and it is now known that it was the first of a series of circumscribed appearances of plague in Persia seemingly disconnected with each other, and with the exception of the Schuster- Dizful outbreak, having no obvious relations with the previous diffusion of the disease in Mesopotamia. The following is a brief account of the several outbreaks of plague or probable plague which have occurred in Persia, following upon the Shuster-Dizful outbreak, to the time of the latest official information. In December 1876, a very rapidly fatal disease, characterised by intense fever, head- Northern ache, delirium, and the appearance of inflammatory swellings in the groins, the arm- .!!^' pits, and behind the ear, appeared in two villages of Northern Persia, named Jaferabad Khorassan, and Dezedje, 25 leagues from the south-east angle of the Caspian. These villages lie in a large and beautiful valley, at an altitude of about 1,000 metres, a kilometre distant from each other, four leagues to the south of Sharoud, and about two miles from the route between Teheran and Meshed. This malady continued among the population of the villages until the end of January 1877.f In March 1877,1 plague broke out in Resht (estimated population 20,000), the ReshTmr- capital of the province of Ghilan, near to the North-western corner of the Caspian Sea. 78. * With refereuce to the appearance of plague in Bagdad in 1877, the earliest cases reported officially to the Turkish authorities occurred on the 17th January, and it was not until the middle of March that the existence of the disease in tlie city would appear to have been fully recognised by them. A return of the deaths from plague among the Jewish community of Bagdad during the outbreak of 1876-77, furnished to Surgeon-Major Colvill by the Chief Rabbi, and enclosed by that gentleman in a despatch dated the 4th September 1877, shows that three deaths were recorded in December 1876, one on the 2nd of the month, the other two on the 20th and 21st respectively. In Appendix A. attached to the present memorandum, I have given certain further details descriptive of plague, as observed in the province of Bagdad, derived from Mr. Colvill, and which will serve to make more complete the account of symptoms given by that gentleman in his Report printed with my first memorandum. [In Appendix F. I am now enabled to add, through the courtesy of the Epidemiological Society, an important paper on the character of epidemic plague as observed in Mesopotamia in 1876-77, by Dr. E. D. Dickson, physician to the British Embassy, Constantinople.—J. N. R.] f Dr. Tholozan, Comptes Kendus de VAcademic dcs Sciences, Vol. 85 (1877), p. 432. i The Chancellor of the Russian Consulate-Generol at Tabriz, M. Schulzewski, has reported, according to Dr. Castaldi, the delegate of the Ottoman General Board of Health at Teheran {see Appendix B. following), tliat early in January 1877, there had occuri^ed at Baku, on the Caspian shore of Transcaucasia, within Russian territory, several cases of a bubonic typhoid malady. In two houses seven cases of this malady occurred, all ending fatally in two or three days. K 645. G$