Stimulants are to be used when indictated.

During the attack all patients must be confined to their beds, and in convalescence should expose themselves very cautiously.

I have not, in this paper, entered into the minute study of grippe, as my main purpose was to emphasize my beliefs in regard to variety and the causation of some of the more prominent symptoms and complications, and I feel assured that if this paper causes some physician addicted to the antipyretic or other form of treatment to renounce it in favor of the one here advocated, it will have done much good.

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THE GREAT PLAGUES OF HISTORY.

BY M. F. CARSON, M D., GRIFFIN, Ga.

At first view, it may appear a matter for wonder, that there should be so wide-spread an interest in everything pertaining to the origin and dissemination of disease throughout the race.

Daily observation, however, reveals the fact that such interest is in reality well-nigh universal. Nothing, perhaps, so quickly engages the attention of the public as the account of some new disease, or the discovery of a new remedy vaunted as a panacea for human ailment, or the history of some great epidemic which has decimated-time and again—the populations of the nations of the past. We do not need to seek far, in order to discover the true causes of this anxious attitude of the public mind. It is at once obvious, that the universal law of death must ever lend a somber interest to all infirmities of the human organism; and hence it is, that all men, the wise and learned as well as the ignorant and narrow-minded, seize with avidity upon every shadow which gives the least promise of some delay in the inevitable termination of life.

The object of the present article is to recall the more striking features of the great pestilences of the past ages; to note the conditions of life under which they appeared; and, then, to refer to the success which has attended, and may yet attend, the efforts toward banishing such destructive maladies from society by an improved sanitation. It is of decided importance to understand what relation society sustains to the diminution of, not only the number, but also

the malignancy of those deadly disorders which have so often afflicted mankind.

The great bubonic plague is now almost a thing of the past. It will, therefore, best illustrate the object in view by showing the influence which our improved state of society has exerted upon one of the deadliest of all the scourges which have made their appearance since the beginning of time. Then, again, the history of the plague is, in itself, a record of almost unparalleled horrors, and thus presents an absorbing interest to any reader. The story

of its outbreaks reads like the thrilling tales of the old wars, and the scene of its visitations presented more ruins, left behind more victims than could be met with upon the bloodiest battle-fields the world has ever known.

In reviewing the history of this fatal scourge, I will consider it under the twofold division of—

First, the special visitations of the plaque mentioned in history; and,

Second, the characteristics of the disease as a distinct malady,

glancing under the former, at some of the most noted occurrences in the description of individual scourges, together with the time and manner of the pestilential outbreak; and under the latter at, 1st, the causes of the plague; 24, its abnormal appearances both before and after death; 3d, its symptoms; and, 4th, its treatment, together with the probabilities of success in the direction of preventive

measures.

FIRST THE HISTORICAL VISITATIONS OF THE PLAGUE.

The plague, simple or malignant, is undoubtedly one of the most ancient maladies to which flesh is heir. It has shown a tendency to linger for a varying period of time in some special portion of the globe, the rest of the world being free, in the meanwhile, from its ravages.

But it

may be stated in general terms, that the periodic return of the plague has occasioned the most destructive calamities in every continent, except that of America, for a time corresponding with the entire history of the human race. It has been known by as many names as the variations in its type would naturally suggest; but these have only been variations of one great original disease, and each of these apparent changes has only represented a difference in the degree of malignancy caused by accidental surroundings. But whether we term the scourge before us the plague, or pest, or pestilence, we mean the same fell malady which has dealt out death with such an unsparing hand throughout almost every nation, from the Libyan deserts to the shores of the Caspian, and from the Irish Channel to the frontiers of the Chinese Empire.

In dealing with this disease, we must remember that we are not considering a subject which belongs exclusively to the past. Although bereft of much of its ancient terror, it yet shows itself by no means rarely, and at times with its characteristic malignancy, in Russia, Egypt, India, China and Mesopotamia.

The earliest history of the bubonic plague is veiled in obscurity. It is useless to attempt to follow it in its dim, traditional wanderings in those remote times before systematic observations were regarded of any importance, or suspected of being of such inestimable value to posterity It has been claimed, indeed, that we have no direct record, earlier than the third century before Christ, of any distinct pestilential outbreak. But if we accept, as indeed we must, the Mosaic account of some of the Egyptian plagues, which manifested the distinctive characteristic of afflicting both man and beast with most loathsome sores, we are carried back to the very dawn of history, in our efforts to trace the beginnings of this ravaging pestilence. The record of these earlier plagues seems to point to their identity with

those later bubonic plagues, which manifested the same malignant fatality in after ages, not only on the banks of the Nile, but in many other parts of the globe.

But to those who think that so remote an antiquity is entirely too fanciful, or that those old Mosaic accounts are not sufficiently explicit, satisfactory evidence can be presented of an age that is at least respectable, by referring them to those later records whose historic accuracy of description and explicitness of detail are wholly beyond dispute.

Thus, during the reign of Trajan, the physician, Rufus of Ephesus refers to the writings of Dionysius, who lived in the third century before Christ, and mentions the fact that these writings contain a description of an epidemic malady of pestilential buboes, which appeared in his day, in Libya, Egypt, and in Syria.

Rufus, who appears to have been one of the most noted. physicians of his time, regarded the epidemic recorded by Dionysius as identical with the pestilence which ravaged these same countries during his own lifetime.

The historian, Livy, records a similar plague, which destroyed more than a million people in Africa alone.

The great antiquity of the plague in Egypt, and in other portions of Africa, would seem to be conclusively established by the frequent mention of such pestilences in so many of the most ancient records. In fact, Africa was looked upon for ages as its natural home, and it was not until the sixth century of the Christian era that the bubonic plague, in the reign of Justinian, first crossed the Mediterranean and made its appearance upon European soil. Although confined to Asia and Africa for such a vast period of time, when it did reach Europe, it took up its permanent abode.

From this period of European invasion begins that steady march of the pestilence, which moved forward with varying malignancy, it is true, but with a steady persistency, for a period extending over eleven centuries. Nothing could