Epidemics Resulting from Wars

(b) Eastern Europe

During the numerous wars that were waged in eastern Europe in the course of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, epidemic diseases frequently made their appearance. After the siege of Vienna (1683), typhus fever broke out in various parts of Hungary, particularly in Pressburg, where many soldiers were congregated. The disease spread from the soldiers to the civilians, and the pestilence lasted from November 1683 to the spring of 1684. After the return of the Prussian troops from Hungary, typhus fever broke out in many parts of Germany; for example, in Minden.^[71]

At the beginning of the eighteenth century bubonic plague broke out in Constantinople and spread from there to the Lower Danube countries and to Russia, particularly to Ukraine. According to Hecker,^[72] this dissemination was greatly furthered by the adventurous campaign of Charles XII of Sweden, so that the epidemic included all eastern Europe and gradually embraced north-western Germany and Sweden. Fleeing Swedish and Polish soldiers, after the battle of Pultowa (July 8, 1707), conveyed the disease to Silesia. Danzig was severely attacked in that year, and a few cases occurred there in the year 1708; but in the following year a very severe pestilence broke out, reached its climax in September, and between January 5 and December 7, 1709, carried away 32,599 persons. From Danzig the plague spread to Courland, Livonia, Pomerania, Denmark, and Sweden. In Copenhagen 20,822 persons died in the year 1710, in Stockholm 40,000, in Karlskrona 16,000.

In the years 1716–18, when Austria and Turkey once more came to blows over the Turkish occupation of Morea, which belonged to the Venetians, bubonic plague broke out in Constantinople and also among the Turks who were shut up in Belgrade. The Austrian army, which was encamped outside of Belgrade, was apparently not attacked by that disease, although some 4,000 men succumbed to intermitting fever, head-disease, and dysentery.^[73]

During the war waged by Russia and Austria against Turkey (1736–9), bubonic plague appeared along the Lower Danube. ‘It broke out there,’ says Häser,^[74] ‘first during the war waged by Austria and Russia against Turkey, and the result was that the war was terminated unexpectedly, and in a manner unfavourable to the Christian arms. At the time of its appearance in Ukraine (July 1738) the disease was conveyed by Austrian troops to Temesvar; from there it gradually spread over all Hungary, mostly along the banks of the Theiss to the boundaries of Carniola, Moravia, and Austria, and also along the Carpathian Mountains to Poland and Bukowina. The devastation caused by the pestilence continued for seven years, and the measures adopted by the authorities proved of little or no avail.

The severe epidemic of bubonic plague during the Russo-Turkish War of 1769–72 has been carefully investigated by Hecker.^[75] The Turkish army, in consequence of inferior nourishment, was badly infected with intermittent fever, dysentery, and typhus fever when it set out from Constantinople in March 1769. When the Russian troops advanced, the Turks retreated after an engagement near Galatz. Since the disease had been conveyed on ships from Constantinople to Galatz, where many Russians succumbed to it, the city was evacuated. On the way to Jassy every trace of the pestilence disappeared, and in Jassy the soldiers were quartered in the houses of the citizens. Since patients suffering from contagious diseases had not been isolated in the military hospitals there, in the middle of January typhus fever broke out in them, accompanied by glandular swellings in the groin. Four weeks later a Jew and his two children were taken sick in the city and died, the Jew having bought a fur coat in the hospital. Since the Russian commander-in-chief did not hold the disease to be bubonic plague and did nothing to prevent it from spreading, in March 1770 it spread far and wide in Moldavia and Wallachia. Not until the end of April was the presence of bubonic plague officially admitted; and then the well-qualified physician Orraeus was commissioned to make an investigation.

From Jassy the disease was conveyed to Botoshany, which also lies in northern Moldavia, and there it soon developed into a severe epidemic and carried away more than 800 out the town’s 2,500 inhabitants; the rest fled to Carpathia. ‘The patients,’ says Hecker,^[76] ‘lay in tents, and without care or medical help awaited an almost certain death. The city itself afforded a sight of complete disorder; the houses were deserted and stood with open windows and doors, the air was poisoned with the odour of accumulated refuse, and the general devastation bore silent witness to the most extreme misery. In addition to that, there were multitudes of savage, ravenous dogs, which dug up the dead and menaced the sick.’

Conditions were just as bad in Jassy when Orraeus arrived there on May 10; of the inhabitants and of the Russian garrison more than half had died, while many streets were entirely depopulated. Since the persons infected with the disease were placed out in a near-by forest, where they were left without care, many patients were concealed inside the houses and their bodies afterwards secretly buried in gardens and cellars. There was no medical help, since both of the Greek physicians had fled from the city. On May 20 the Russian troops, at the instigation of Orraeus, withdrew from Jassy; a convent was converted into a hospital, and soon after that the pestilence began to subside. By June 22 it had disappeared.

In Wallachia the disease broke out somewhat later than in Moldavia, and with considerably less severity. In Bucharest it lasted until May.

In Bender, situated in Bessarabia on the Dniester, there was a mild epidemic of bubonic plague after the city had been stormed on September 16, 1770. The carrying-off of war-booty caused new pestilences in the army and in the population of Podolia and Little Russia. For a short time in the last part of September the main army also suffered from plague in its fixed quarters on the Pruth.

The Turkish army, which passed the winter in Bulgaria, was severely attacked by plague, but no further information about this outbreak is available.

In February 1771, Moldavia and Wallachia suffered very little from plague, although there were occasional outbreaks here and there (for example, in Bucharest) until the year 1773; but these were always of short duration.

The transplantation of this disease into neighbouring countries, especially Russia and its capital, was of particular importance. In consequence of the widespread occurrence of bubonic plague in Moldavia and Wallachia when the war broke out in the spring of 1770, large numbers of fugitives from those parts gathered along the border of Transylvania, where a quarantine establishment was opened at Törzburg (south-west of Kronstadt). In Rukur, a border-village of Wallachia, whither large numbers of people fled daily, a Jewess succumbed at the end of April to bubonic plague, and in the course of the next eight weeks 60 more people died. From there the pestilence spread to neighbouring localities, in which 615 out of 3,000 inhabitants (including 31 outsiders) died. The climax of the plague was in September. It gradually spread throughout the border-towns of Transylvania, but only in occasional instances did it reach the interior of the country; all told, there were 1,024 deaths from the pestilence in Transylvania in the year 1770.

Since all the supplies of the Russian army were conveyed to it on Polish wagons, Polish peasants contracted the disease in the infected countries, and then spread it throughout Poland. Jewish pedlars, who purchased clothes, furs, and war-booty in the Russian camp, likewise helped to spread the disease. In Poland the plague became unusually widespread, particularly in Podolia, Volhynia, and in the eastern part of Galicia; 47 cities and 580 villages, according to Chenot, were attacked, and 275 of the latter were almost completely wiped out. The total loss in these regions is estimated at 250,000. But the disease penetrated no further into Poland, and Warsaw did not suffer at all.

Southern Russia was attacked later than Poland—not until August 1770. Kiev was the first of several cities in which the plague broke out; the disease, which was borne there on infected wares from Podolia, carried away 20,000 people, about one-fifth of the population of the city. Fugitives from Kiev conveyed the pestilence to many cities and villages in Little Russia, while troops returning from Bender helped to spread it in the north. In Nieskin, a city in Ukraine, the plague caused horrible devastation; it broke out there for the second time in the year 1771, and carried away from 8,000 to 10,000 people.

It was generally believed that the severe epidemic of bubonic plague which raged in Moscow in the year 1771 was directly connected with the expedition against the Turks. At that time the city had some 230,000 inhabitants; the streets, full of filth, were narrow, and the houses, most of which were one-story wooden structures, stood close together. According to Hecker, the beginning of the plague is obscure; fugitives from the scene of the war, and wool imported from Poland or Ukraine are both given as the original means of dissemination, but inasmuch as the disease was so widespread in the south, it is probable that it was conveyed to the north in various ways. Schafonsky, writing in Russian, described the plague in an excellent book, of which Hecker made use; the description by a surgeon named Samoilowitz,^[77] who did good service during the plague, contracted the disease himself, and was roughly treated in a revolt, according to Hecker, lacks scientific merit and is unreliable. In November and December, 1770, there were a few suspected cases in a hospital in the eastern part of the city; Schafonsky diagnosed the disease as bubonic plague, while the medical officer of the city called it typhus fever. By means of strict isolation and other measures this outbreak was soon entirely checked. As early as January and February, however, indubitable cases of plague had occurred, but they were kept secret. The epidemic really began in the Imperial cloth-manufactory, where 3,000 working-men were employed; not until 130 people had died within eight weeks, was this fact made known on March 9, 1771. Since many of the working-men lived in the city and had meanwhile conveyed the disease to their homes, the measures of prevention came too late. The patients were now taken to a convent in Ukresh (near Moscow), while all the rest of the employees were quarantined. But these measures merely helped to spread the disease, since many of the working-men, in order to escape being quarantined, fled and concealed themselves in the city. When it became known that bubonic plague was present in Moscow, the nobility fled to the country. The people themselves refused to listen to any advice; nobody believed in contagion, and in September there was actually a revolt in the city against the measures that had been adopted to check the epidemic. The compulsory confinement in hospitals of infected people and the quarantining of their families led to numerous concealments. In July the pestilence had already become very widespread; many houses in the suburbs were empty, the courts of justice and workshops were closed, and, since nurses and grave-diggers were dying off rapidly, convicts were employed to do their work. In the southern part of the city a convent was converted into a hospital, and at the end of July only one attendant was on hand there to take care of 1,000 patients. The epidemic reached its climax in September, when from 600 to 1,000 persons died every day. By January 1772, the pestilence had disappeared. From the month of April 1771 on, the number of people that contracted the disease and the number that died were officially recorded; the number of deaths (excluding the bodies buried in secret) was:

The number of deaths, which at that time averaged 7,000 per annum in Moscow, thus increased to 58,000 (including some 1,000 secret burials), and at least 52,000 were directly due to the epidemic. About 150 priests were victims of their calling.

During the pestilence there was constant intercourse between Moscow and the surrounding country, since the necessaries of life had to be brought to the city, where clothes and household goods were to be bought very cheaply. Thus most of the villages and cities in the surrounding country were infected. Some of the latter were almost completely depopulated, while the estate-owners found protection by shutting themselves up in their manors. Of the more distant cities Jaroslav-on-the-Volga was very severely attacked, while Borowsk, Kaluga, and Tula suffered somewhat less. St. Petersburg was the only city to prohibit outsiders from entering, and it was consequently spared.