PLAGUE (Lat. plaga, plague, destruction, in jury, blow, from plangerc, connected with Gk. rXha-cretv, plessein, Lith. plakti, to strike, and pos sibly with Goth. Itokan, OHG. finohkon, Ger. finchen, to curse), PESTIS; PESTIS BtT0NICA: PESTIS INGE INALIS ; BUIluNIC PLAGUE; BLACK DEATH. An acute infectious disease caused by the presence of a specific microbe and character ized by the enlargement and suppuration of lym phatic glands.
iliszonY. Under BLACK DEATH is given the history of plague to and including the pandemic of 1334 to 1351. when China, India, Persia, Russia, Germany, Italy, France, England, and Norway were devastated. and many millions of deaths resulted. Proust is authority for the statement that between the eleventh and fifteenth centuries at least thirty minor epidemics of the disease appeared in different parts of Europe. A grave and important epidemic was traced from Syria to Marseilles in 1720, when 86.000 people fell victims to the plague in that city. Dur ing the epidemic of 1770-71, which probably passed from .Jassy through Kiev, 80,000 persons lay dead of the scourge in Moscow alone. Early in the nineteenth century Constantinople became the seat of two severe epidemics, one in 1803, with 150,000 deaths, and the other in 1813, with 110,000 deaths. The Balkan peninsula was visited by the dread disease on several occasions between 1814 and 1S41 ; Greece suffered in 1828, and the southern part of Italy in 1815. Russia,
in the neighborhood of Astrakhan, was swept by an epidemic from 1877 to 1879. While Europe was passing through this history and finally emerged from the shadow of the plague in 1879, Africa and Asia were suffering terribly. Kitasato reports 21 epidemics between 1783 and 1844 in Egypt. Tripoli suffered in 1874. as did also Arabia. In the river valleys of the Tigris and Euphrates outbreaks of plague occurred in 1773, and several subsequently and as lately as 1876, from which date it raged until 1895. The plague in Persia has been intermittent and of frequent occurrence; perhaps the epidemic of 1876-77 is most noteworthy, because it was the source of the Russian infection in 1S77. In India the disease has been endemic for centuries, although reliable and accurate accounts date only from 1S15. Its record since that date has been unbroken. Bombay has been a special sufferer since 1896. To trace or chronicle the course and outbreaks of the plague in China is very difficult. The greatest visitation of the scourge, in 1342 and the following years, has been described, (See BLACK DEATH.) There were out breaks of the disease in 1850, 1866, 1ST] and 1872. and subsequently. The pandemic of 1894 continues. It. has been learned since Japan an nexed Formosa that plague has existed in the latter country for a very long time.