A HISTORY
OF
EPIDEMIC PESTILENCES
FROM THE EARLIEST AGES,
1495 Years before the Birth of our Saviour to 1848:
WITH
RESEARCHES INTO THEIR NATURE, CAUSES,
AND PROPHYLAXIS.

BY

EDWARD BASCOME, M.D.

“The all-surrounding heav’n, the vital air,
Is big with death: and tho’ the putrid south
Be shut, tho’ no convulsive agony
Shake from the deep foundations of the world
Th’ imprison’d plagues, a secret venom oft
Corrupts the air, the water, and the land.”
Art of Preserving Health.

LONDON:
JOHN CHURCHILL, PRINCES STREET, SOHO.
1851.

HUGHES AND CO., PRINTERS,
KING’S HEAD COURT, GOUGH SQUARE.

DEDICATION.

TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE

THE EARL OF SHAFTESBURY,

AND

TO DR. JOHN CONOLLY, M.D.

My Lord,

My Dear Sir,

Inadequate as I feel to the task of conveying to you my sense ofobligation in being permitted the honour of dedicating this work topersons of your high position and distinguished merit, I feel doublyso, to express my admiration of your immeasurable benevolence,as portrayed not only in your public capacities in general, butmore especially—the one in emanating, the other in carrying outthe provisions of the law for the protection and kind considerationof those unfortunates of God’s creatures whom it hath pleased himto afflict with the direst of human maladies, the privation orprostration of the noblest of man’s faculties—Reason.

That your labours have been of incalculable benefit to sufferinghumanity is too notorious to admit of either comment or eulogy from me.

That you both may live long in health, to see perfected “the good workbegun” by you, and that you may enjoy the satisfaction of a well-earnedreputation resulting therefrom, is the earnest wish of,

My Lord,

and

My dear Sir,

With the highest respect,

Your obedient,

Humble Servant,

The Author.

[v]

PREFACE.

Feeling it to be incumbent on every one to contribute to the good ofhis fellow-men, in as far as his experience enables him—

“Non sibi sed toti mundo se credere natum;”

and presuming on the practical knowledge gained during a sojourn of aquarter of a century in climes that are not the most hospitable, theAuthor has been induced to offer to the public the following pages, ashis professional lucubrations on a subject deeply interesting to everycommunity,—a subject both comprehensive and obscure,—comprehensive,inasmuch as it involves the consideration of a vast variety of diseaseunder the appellation of Epidemic Pestilence,—“The offspring ofinclement skies, and of legions of putrefying locusts,”—and obscure,as regards the uncertainty which must ever appertain to all thatrelates to the phenomena of Life and Death.

[vi]

The Author has endeavoured to

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