Epidemics Examined and Explained: or, Living Germs Proved by Analogy to be a Source of Disease. Grove John
and they shall pursue thee until thou perish.—The Lord shall make the rain of thy land powder and dust: from heaven shall it come down upon thee until thou be destroyed."
It may be said, and I doubt not will be said, all this is unnecessarily dragging the sacred volume into an enquiry totally foreign to its general tenor; on the contrary, however, I maintain by that Book we are to learn the ways of God to man, and further, that no study can impress mankind with so awful, so terrific an idea of his responsible position, as that which leads him into the investigation of the causes by which the Almighty, doubtless in His wisdom, has thought fit at various epochs of this world's history, to place man face to face with pestilence, famine and sudden death.
There is no man would less willingly than myself introduce profanely the revelations of Scripture. The observations here made are not, therefore, intended for light or heedless controversy; if they have a significance of any import, let them be alluded to in the same spirit with which they have been quoted; if they convey nothing for approval to the reader, let silence rest upon them. To those who would fain disregard my request, let me recall to their minds the veneration which from childhood I trust we have always felt on hearing or seeing those two words—Holy Bible.
It is yet to be determined, whether the greenish or reddish appearance of the garment spoken of, as being contaminated with the plague of the leprosy had any specific relation to the disease itself. The priest orders that the garment shall be shut up seven days, and on the seventh day, if the plague be increased, by which, of course, is meant if the greenish or reddish colour have increased, and from which we may gather that a power of spontaneous increase was possessed by the matter, such a result indicated a fretting leprosy, and the garment was to be burnt. Again, though there may have been no increase, but a persistence of the coloured matter after shutting up and washing the garment, it is to be burnt, for it is fret inward, signifying, that the germs of the affection are still there, and may soon increase. Other rules follow in reference to the plague of leprosy, and the mode of deciding whether an article be unclean or clean is definitely laid down, but our purpose is served in mentioning the above, to shew that in the time of Moses the spontaneous increase of certain minute multiplying germs was supposed to have a close connexion with disease. It is equally clear, that the priests were aware by the order given them, that if the ordinary modes of purifying articles of clothing failed in their effect, the safest and surest method of destroying infectious matter was to resort to the practice of consuming by fire all materials capable of propagating an infectious malady.
The facts above noticed, accurately correspond to what we now know as applicable to the matter of infectious and contagious maladies. It is a rule, I believe universally adopted throughout the Poor-houses of this country, to put the clothes of all persons about to become residents in these establishments, into ovens, where they are submitted to a temperature incompatible with the existence of either animal or vegetable life. By this means all living matters are destroyed, but the fabrics and inorganic matters retain their properties intact. This simple proceeding, I am credibly informed, is an effectual preventive of contamination by articles of clothing, a desideratum of no small importance, when it is remembered that the diseases among the poor owe much of their inveteracy to the accumulation of effete organic matters about their persons and clothes.
A few more observations are called for on the quotation from Deuteronomy, in which allusion is made to living matter being an agent in the production of disease. In the curse upon the children of Israel for disobedience, we read that they are to be smitten with mildew. No further information, however, is vouchsafed to us, nevertheless, we can conceive the wretched condition of those on whom the curse might fall. Again, we find in a continuation of this curse that the Almighty uses means such as He adopted in the sixth plague of the Egyptians. The ashes of the furnace became a small dust in all the land of Egypt, breaking forth with blains upon man and beast. In the curse of the Israelites the words are: "The Lord shall make the rain of thy land powder and dust: from Heaven shall it come down upon thee until thou be destroyed."
It might be conjectured that the absence of rain would be sufficient to account for the extinction of the people on whom the curse was pronounced, by the famine and drought necessarily attendant upon the loss of moisture. But this does not appear to be the meaning of the passage, for the powder and dust are mentioned as the agents of destruction; besides, in the continuation of the curse, the locust is to destroy the grain, the worm the grapes, and the olive is to shed his fruit; we may thus take for granted that drought and famine are not to be caused by the showering of powder and dust, it must consequently be supposed that the effects of the dust in the instance of the Egyptians are to be compared and classified with those of the dust which smote the Israelites.
As far then as Sacred History conducts us in the enquiry, concerning the causes of pestilences, we gain encouragement in the belief that living germs are the active agents, for in the case of the leprosy, we have evidence of reproduction in connexion with infection, which, if our line of argument be tenable, amounts to demonstration; then, in the other instances of the plagues, by boils and blains, they distinctly bear comparison with the accounts given by profane writers, of the visitations of pestilences on the earth, subsequently to those mentioned in Scripture history.
This leads now to the consideration of recorded facts observed and noted during the various Epidemics in the early and subsequent periods of Man's History, as given by those on whom reliance may be fairly placed.
Setting aside the uncertain information contained in the writings of the Chinese,[17] a people whose progress in the science and practice of Medicine has nothing to commend it (even as it is at the present day) to the notice either of the physician or the historian, unless it be to the latter as a mark of peculiarity both in a social and political point of view—passing also over the Egyptians, the Arabians, and the Greeks—and even Hippocrates himself, we are driven to the Romans for any authentic or precise notice of Epidemic Affections. It has been attributed to Hippocrates that he predicted the appearance of the Plague at Athens, and that when it was introduced into Greece he dispelled it, "by purifying the air with fires into which were thrown sweet-scented herbs and flowers along with other perfumes."[18] But little advantage can be derived from enquiries concerning the first appearance of any disease, for the probability of discovering the primary cause is certainly a hopeless case, if attempted by means of the writings of ancient authors, when it is recollected that with all the science and learning of the ancient Egyptians, the use of optical instruments was not comprised among the paraphernalia of their arts. The knowledge that was limited to the powers of natural vision, where the foundation of knowledge is based upon facts obtained through the aid of that penetrator of nature's secrets, the microscope, offers no advantages to the student of the present day.
To say that a disease commenced in the East and travelled westward, and at length found a habitation and a name in every part of the globe, is no more than to say that disease is coeval with the fall of man. The cause is as much hidden in the region of its birth, as in that where it sojourns for a time. The cause of the sweating sickness was as much a mystery in England as in all the other nations of Europe, which were visited by its devastating power. And these observations apply with as much force to one disease as another; for even our indigenous ague, originating in some places so limited that the shadow of a passing cloud may mark the boundary of its dwelling place, as inscrutably evades our vigilance, with all the appliances that art can bring to our assistance, in endeavouring to evoke its extraordinary properties under the cognizance of our senses.
If we weigh the air which carries the poison, or analyze it by the most delicate chemical tests, or take the weight of the atmosphere which is charged with it, or if we take the blood which carries the germs of the disease to the tissues of the body, and submit them after the work of destruction is accomplished, to the most rigid inspection, we can but exclaim,
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