But this was no isolated fact. A similar cessation of plague was noted soon after in the greater part of western Europe. In 1666 a severe plague raged in Cologne and on the Rhine, which was pro longed till 1670 in the district. In the Netherlands there was plague in 1667-1669, but there are no definite notices of it after 1672. France saw the last plague epidemic in 1668, till it reap peared in 1720. In the years 1675-1684 a new plague epidemic appeared in North Africa, Turkey, Poland, Hungary, Austria and Germany, progressing generally northward. Malta lost 11,000 persons in 1675. The plague of Vienna in 1679 was very severe, causing 76,000 or probably more deaths. Prague in 1681 lost 83,000 by plague. Dresden was affected in 1680, Magdeburg and Halle in 1682-in the latter town with a mortality of 4,397 out of a population of about 1 o,000. Many North German cities suffered about the same time; but in 1683 the plague disappeared from Germany till the epidemic of 1707. In Spain it ceased about 1681; in Italy certain cities were attacked till the end of the century, but not later (Hirsch).
The plague-epidemics in Egypt between 1833 and 1845 are very important in the history of plague, since the disease was almost for the first time scientifically studied in its home by skilled European physicians, chiefly French. The disease was found to be less contagious than reported to be by popular tradi tion, and most of the French school went so far as to deny the contagiousness of the disease altogether.
An outbreak of plague in 1878-1879 on the banks of the Volga caused a panic throughout Europe and most European govern ments sent special commissions to the spot. The British com missioners were Surgeon-Major Colvill and Dr. J. F. Payne, who, like all the foreign commissioners, arrived when the epidemic was over. In the opinion of Dr. Payne the real beginning of the disease was in the year 1877, in the vicinity of Astrakhan, and the sudden development of the malignant out of a mild form of the disease was no more than had been observed in other places.
In 1823 (though not officially known till later) an epidemic broke out at Kedarnath in Garhwal, a sub-district of Kumaon on the south-west of the Himalayas, on a high situation. In 1834 and 1836 other epidemics occurred, which at last attracted the attention of the government. In 1849-1850, and again in 1852, the
disease raged very severely and spread southward. In 1853 Dr. Francis and Dr. Pearson were appointed a commission to inquire into the malady. In 1876-1877 another outbreak occurred. The symptoms of this disease, called maha murree or mahamari by the natives, were precisely those of oriental plague. The feature of blood-spitting, to which much importance had been attached, appeared to be not a common one. A very remarkable circum stance was the death of animals (rats, and more rarely snakes) at the outbreak of an epidemic. The rats brought up blood, and the body of one examined after death by Dr. Francis showed an affection of the lungs.
The most striking feature of the early history of plague is the gradual retrocession of plague from the west, after a series of exceedingly destructive outbreaks extending over several cen turies, and its disappearance from Europe. Western countries were the first to be freed from its presence, namely, England, Portugal and Spain. From all these it finally disappeared about 1680, at the close of a period of pandemic prevalence. Northern and central Europe became free about 1714, and the south of France in 1722. The last outbreak in northern Russia occurred in 1770. After this plague only appeared in the south-east of Europe, where in turn it gradually died away during the first half of the 19th century. In 1841 its long reign on this continent came to an end with an isolated outbreak in Turkey. From that time until quite recently it remained extinct, except in the East. The province of Astrakhan, where a very small and limited out break occurred in 1878, is politically in Europe, but geographi cally it belongs rather to Asia. And even in the East plague was confined to more or less clearly localized epidemics ; it showed no power of pandemic diffusion. In short, if we regard the history of this disease as a whole, it appears to have lost such power from the time of the Great Plague of London in 1665, which was part of a pandemic wave, until the present day. There was not merely a gradual withdrawal eastwards lasting nearly two hundred years, but the outbreaks which occurred during that period, violent as some of them were, showed a constantly diminishing power of diffusion and an increasing tendency to localization. The sudden reversal of that long process is therefore a very remarkable oc currence. Emerging from the remote endemic centres to which it had retreated, plague has once more taken its place among the zymotic diseases with which modern science has to reckon.