EPIDEMICS,, PAST AND PEESENT. 
599 
"by strikes,, or by any cause that throws large bodies of men 
out of employment, is equally efficacious in originating epi- 
demics of typhus, as famine from failure of the crops. 
5. Relapsing Fever is so called from the fact that after a 
week^s illness there is an interval of good health for a week, 
followed by a second attack. It is contagions, and is epidemic 
in a stricter sense than even typhus. Although sometimes 
more prevalent in this country than any other fever, it may 
disappear for so many years, that on its return it has more 
than once been thought to be a new malady. For upwards of 
ten years not a case of it has been observed in Britain, but 
it has constituted the chief component of many of the greatest 
epidemics of fever which have devastated this country and 
Ireland, and it was one of the diseases composing the 
Russian Plague, which in the spring of the present year 
caused such unnecessary alarm in this country. It usually 
prevails in the epidemic form in conjunction with typhus, 
and it is connected in its origin more directly with protracted 
starvation and the use of unwholesome food than even the 
latter disease. Hence, in this country it is familiarly known 
as Famine Fever,^'’ and in Germany as Hung er pest F 
6. Oriental Plague is still met with in Egypt and in other 
Eastern countries; but, in the Middle Ages it frequently 
overran the whole of Europe and invaded England, and from 
the extent of its ravages it was known as the “ Blach Death/’ 
and the Great Mortality F The Great Plague of London of 
1665 is a familiar fact in history. Since then the disease 
has not been met with in this country. But British typhus is 
merely a modified form of Oriental plague, or, in other words, 
plague is merely typhus complicated with numerous abscesses 
beneath the skin. Cases of typhus are occasionally met with 
in this country, corresponding in every respect with true 
plague. Both diseases appear under similar circumstances, 
but those which generate plague are of a more aggravated 
character than those which suffice to produce typhus. 
The disappearance of plague from London, notwithstanding 
©ur vastly increased communications with Egypt, has been 
chiefly due to the better construction of our dwellings since 
the Great Fire^^ of 1666. ^Ht is probable,^^ says an able 
writer on the plague, that if this country has been so long 
forsaken by the plague as almost to have forgotten, or at 
least to be unwilling to own its natural offspring, it has been 
because the parent has been disgusted with the circumstances 
under which that hateful birth was brought to light, has re- 
moved the filth from her doors in which it was matured, and 
has adopted a system of cleanliness^^ fatal to its nourishment 
at home. But if ever this favoured country, now grown wise 
