CHAPTER XX. 



SMALL-POX. — CATTLE PLAGTJE. 



Small-pox. 



Small-pox is an infections and inoculable disease of man, charac- 

 terised by sudden and severe fever, followed in forty-eight hours by a 

 characteristic papular eruption which gradually becomes vesicular 

 and then pustular. The virus is contained in the vesicles, and in a 

 concentrated form in mature pustules. It also passes into the air 

 from the breath and skin. Infection may occur from the dead body, 

 and clothes and bedding may retain the contagium for months. 

 One attack, as a rule, gives immunity against future attacks. 



Small-pox is undoubtedly a disease foreign to this country. Its 

 home is in the East. Some of the old writers held that it spread to 

 Europe from Alexandria about the year 640 a.d., following in the 

 wake of the Arab conquests in Egypt, Palestine, Persia, along the 

 Asiatic coast, through Lycia, Gallicia, along the coast of Africa, 

 and across the Mediterranean to Spain ; others maintained that it 

 was not introduced until the end of the eleventh or beginning of the 

 twelfth century, by the returning Crusaders. At any rate, small- 

 pox was imported from the East, and probably from Egjfpt. Hero- 

 dotus, who visited Egypt, leads us to infer that epidemics were 

 unknown there during the rule of the Pbaraohs ; but Egypt 

 undoubtedly became a hotbed of pestilence during the Moham.medan 

 occupation. Prosper Alpinus imagined that both the plague and the 

 small-pox were concocted in the putrid waters of the Nile, but he 

 would probably have been more correct if he had suggested that 

 they arose from the insanitary condition of the Arab conquerors 

 and their filthy camp followers, who did their best to destroy all 

 that remained of that magnificent civilisation which had existed in 

 the days of the ancient Egyptians. 



We do not know the exact period at which small-pox was -first 

 imported into England, and the records of the disease are very 

 meagre until the sixteenth century. 



284 



