CHAPTER XII 



THE PLAGUE 



History. According to Sticker the history of this disease can be 

 traced back to the time of the exodus of the Children of Israel from 

 Egypt. The Egyptians of the Pharaohs drained the land, built aque- 

 ducts, disposed of their dead hygienically, reared temples, maintained 

 law and order, developed the elements of literature and science and 

 devised and employed simple machinery. In speaking of the ancient 

 Egyptians, Diodorus says, "The whole manner of life was so evenly 

 ordered that it would appear as though it had been arranged by a 

 learned physician rather than by a lawgiver." Herodotus declared 

 ancient Egypt the healthiest of countries, but filled with physicians, 

 of whom "one treats only the diseases of the eye, another those of 

 the head, the teeth, the abdomen, or the internal organs." Writing of 

 a later time, Gibbon said "Ethiopia and Egypt have been stigmatized 

 in all ages as the source and seminary of the plague." It is evident 

 that in the time of its great civilization Egypt was salubrious ; coinci- 

 dent with the decline in the learning and wisdom of its people, it was 

 visited and desolated by pestilence. That Egypt had lost its salubrity 

 as early as the exodus of the Children of Israel is shown by many pas- 

 sages in the Bible in which the chosen people are threatened with the 

 diseases of Egypt if they neglect or violate the laws. Moses, "learned 

 in all the wisdom of the Egyptians" codified his sanitary rules and 

 regulations in the form of religious rites and ceremonies and thus 

 secured their observance among the faithful, even down to the present 

 time. 



Sticker is quite confident that the pest among the Philistines 

 spoken of in the first book of Samuel, when the captured ark was 

 returned with five golden emerods and five golden mice, was the 

 bubonic plague. 



Of the true nature of the Athenian plague described by Thucydides 

 there is some doubt. It is generally believed to have been the plague, 

 but the description is not sufficiently clear to justify a positive con- 



