Spread of Plague from the East

Independent of the episodes of Marseilles and Messina, the spread of plague from the East continued to exit the above-mentioned law of limitation. In 1788-44 the disease was in the Ukraine, Hungary, the borders of Carniola, Moravia, and Austria, extending along the Carpathians, as far as Poland (20° E. long.). and also in Bukowina, (25° E. long.). It lasted till 1745, and then disappeared from those parts for fifteen years. In 1755-57 plague prevailed in parts of European Turkey, whence it on one occasion extended into Transylvania, in the neighbourhood of Cronstadt, where it was checked (25°·5 E. long.). [Footnote 166-3]

In 1770 a destructive plague arose in Moldavia during the Russo-Turkish War, and shortly afterwards in Wallachia, apparently endemic in the former country at least. It affected also Transylvania and part of Hungary, and still more severely Poland, but was confined to Podolia, Volhynia, the Ukraine, and the eastern part of Galicia (25° E. long), not even penetrating as far as Warsaw. After destroying, it is said, 300,000 persons, and without being checked by any quarantine regulations, the plague died out finally in March 1771, being remarkable for its short duration and spontaneous limitation (Haeser).

In another direction the plague spread over Little Russia in 1770, and desolated Kieff [Kiev], while in the next year it broke out in Moscow and produced one of the most destructive epidemics of modern times. More than 50,000 persons, nearly-one fourth of the population, were carried off. [Footnote 166-4]

The remaining European plague-epidemics of the 18th century were inconsiderable, but on that very account noteworthy. Transylvania was again affected in 1785, Slavonia and Livonia (a district of eastern Galicia) in 1795–96 (25° E. long.), Volhynia in 1798. The disease, while reappearing in the seats of the terrible earlier epidemics, was more limited in its range and of shorter duration. [Footnote 166-5] An epidemic in Dalmatia in 1783–84 is noteworthy in connexion with later outbreaks in the same region. In the last years of the century (1799 -1800) there was a new epidemic in Syria and Egypt, where it affected the French and afterwards the English army.


Footnotes

166-3 Adam Chenot, Abhandlung von der Pest, Dresden, 1776; De Peste, Vienna, 1766.

166-4 Samoilowitz, Mémoire sur la Peste en Russie, 1771, Paris, 1783; Mertens, De la Peste en 1771, Paris, 1801.

166-5 Lorinser, Pest des Orients, Berlin, 1837, p. 103; Schraud, Pest in Syrmien, 1795, 2 vols., Pesth, 1801.





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