156 INSECTS AND MAN 



In the eleventh and fourteenth centuries further out- 

 breaks occurred, and throughout the sixteenth century it 

 was a permanent disease on the European continent. 

 The last appearance of the dread disease, in epidemic 

 form, was "the great plague" of 1665, when seventy 

 thousand persons succumbed in London alone, and it spread 

 throughout the country till 1679, when it suddenly died 

 out. Historians tell us that the great fire of London put 

 an end to the disease in our capital, but bills of mortality 

 of the time show that it was practically extinct before the 

 fire broke out. 



En passant, we may mention that the word quarantine, 

 now so thoroughly assimilated into our language, had its 

 origin during the plague outbreak in Venice, in 1403. 

 The Venetians isolated all persons who had been exposed 

 to infection for a period of forty days, and incidentally 

 laid the foundations of modern preventive medicine. To 

 state that cats and plague are in any way connected may 

 appear farcical, but it is well known that the ancient 

 Egyptians revered the cat as a demi-god, and the reason, 

 according to several reliable authorities, was because, even 

 in those early days, the people were well aware that the 

 presence of numerous rats portended an outbreak of plague 

 and that no creature could so well rid the land of the 

 rodents as the cat, hence the high favour in which it was 

 held. The explanation may not be the correct one, but, at 

 any rate, it bears the stamp of probability. 



After this digression let us return to our brief history 

 of plague. Anything like a complete narrative of the 

 various epidemics and pandemics of the disease is impossible 

 here ; a very full account is given in the eleventh edition 

 of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, and to that work the 

 reader is referred. We may mention, however, that a severe 

 outbreak occurred in China in 1894, and spread from 

 Kaochao to Canton and Hong Kong, and from thence to 

 Bombay and the greater part of India. I*, is with Hong 



