RAVAGES OF THE PLAGUE by Baltimore Correspondent

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Aug 28, 1879

RAVAGES OF THE PLAGUE.

By Baltimore Correspondent

WHAT MANKIND SUFFERED IN THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY.

If we glance at the history of the frightful devastations that have marked the visits of the plague to the earth, mankind has reason to tremble before the dread specter whose appearance the Russians evoked on their pleasure trip to Constantinople, and which now threatens all Europe. Plague epidemics are recorded of almost every century. In the first year of the Peloponnesian war the plague raged with terrible violence in Athens, and Greece’s greatest statesman at that time, Pericles, was one of its victims.

But not until the fourteenth century did it become a scourge to the entire world, traveling as it did then from the eastern boundaries of Asia through China, India, and Russia, and punishing with equal severity the inhabitants of the Pyrenean peninsula and the hardened people of Scandinavia and Iceland. And if the western hemisphere had been discovered at that time, and active communication and traffic with it had existed, there can be no doubt that the grim destroyer would have visited America also. It is, indeed, by no means certain but that the plague did reach this continent, since there are Indian legends which speak of a time of great mortality long before the advent of Europeans.

It is estimated that not less than 52,000,000 persons fell victims to the black death in Asia and Europe toward the middle of the fourteenth century. Of these, 15,000,000 are supposed to have perished in Europe, 24,000,000 in Asia Minor, India, and the adjacent countries, and 13,000,000 in China. One historian writes concerning the appearance of the plague in Europe: “Terrible omens in the heavens overwhelmed the nations with dread. In 1337 a large comet appeared; in following years came immense multitudes of locusts; but in 1348 the end of the world seemed at hand. An earthquake devastated Cyprus, Greece, Italy and the Alpine valleys. Mountains caved in. In the province of Carinthia, in Austria, thirty villages and a town were utterly destroyed. The atmosphere became thick, fetid, and confusing. Wine became turbid in the barrels. Fiery meteors illuminated the sky. A pillar of flame was seen over the papal palace at Avignon. These terrors were followed by a murderous plague. It originated in China, was carried through the whole of Asia, and in Germany received the name of the “Black Death,” because it covered its victims suddenly with black pustules, and often killed them instantaneously. It spread over the whole of Europe, and it is said that it did not rage most virulently in Germany. Nevertheless 14,000 persons died in Basle, 16,000 in Strasburg, and the same number in Erfurt; and they perished in all other places in similar proportions. In Osnabrück only seven families are said to have survived.

For twenty-five years the awful epidemic maintained its annihilating sway, while at the same time droughts, famines, floods, and earthquakes destroyed city and country, and vast swarms of locusts everywhere inflicted the direst ravages. Meantime the whole order of nature seemed reversed. In midwinter the severest rains were experienced, and in summer long-continued and severe frosts, and volcanoes that had been long thought extinct opened their craters anew.—Baltimore Correspondent.