Читать книгу Dealings with the Dead (Vol. 1&2) - Lucius M. Sargent - Страница 32

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I am rather inclined to suspect, that man is a selfish animal. A few days ago, I administered a merited rebuke to a group of young sextons, who had gathered together, after a funeral, and were seated upon a barrow bier, before an unclosed tomb. They had been discussing the subject of capital punishment, and were opposed to it unanimously. They frankly admitted, that they were not influenced, by any consideration of humanity, but looked simply to the fact, that, as the bodies of executed criminals went, commonly, to the surgeons, every execution deprived us of a job. One observed, that Boston was dreadfully healthy—another remarked, that homœopathy had proved a considerable help to us. Several compliments were paid to Thompson, Brandreth, and Mrs. Kidder. But they appeared to anticipate emolument from no source, so certainly, as from the approaching cholera.

I was greatly shocked, and expressed my opinion very freely. I reminded them of the primitive dignity of the sacristan’s office. I should deeply regret, to see our calling reduced to the level of a mere trade, with its tariff—shrouds all rising—coffins looking up! We have a fair share of funerals, and the members of our profession have no just cause for complaint. Steam has helped us prodigiously. It has been said, that, comparing the amount of steam travel with the amount of ante-steam travel, i.e., the present with the past, the relative amount of deaths, from accident, is about the same. Suppose it to be so; the cheapness and facility of locomotion, at present, stimulate a much larger number to move—there is a vast increase of frivolous and pleasure travel—cars are filled with women, crates with bandboxes, and death is to be averaged over the integer—I therefore repeat, that steam has helped our profession. If steam had been known, in ancient Rome, it would have been reckoned a deity, whose diet, like the sacrifice of Juggernaut, would have been flesh and blood.

There is a very natural sensibility, on the part of steamboat and railroad proprietors, to the announcement of disasters, by steam. There is a wonderful eagerness to persuade the public to contemplate these catastrophes, with the larger end of the telescope toward the eye. This also is a great help to our profession. There is really no lack of business, and it is quite abominable, for thoughtless young sextons to pray for the advent of the cholera.

We dwell in a region of the earth, seldom touched by this besom of destruction. Pestilence and famine have rarely come nigh unto us. It would be impious to envy the denizens of milder climes.

“With gold and gems if Chilian mountains glow,

If bleak and barren Scotia’s hills arise;

There plague and poison, lust and rapine grow,

Here peaceful are the vales and pure the skies.”

I thank heaven, I was not an undertaker, in London, in 1665, when there were scarcely enough of the living to bury the dead. When I used to wrap myself up, in the pages of Robinson Crusoe, how little I suspected, that Daniel Defoe was the writer of some twenty volumes beside. His inimitable history of the plague, of 1665, is admirable reading, for the members of our craft.

At irregular periods, plague, yellow fever, sweating sickness, and cholera have visited the earth, with terrible effect. Let us take a cursory view of these awful visitations. AD 78, 10,000 perished daily at Rome. The plague returned there AD 167. Terrible plague in Britain AD 430. A dreadful plague spread over Europe, Asia and Africa, AD 558, and continued, for several years. 200,000 died of the plague in Constantinople, AD 746. This plague raged for three years, and extended to Calabria, Sicily and Greece. William of Malmsbury states, that AD 772, an epidemic disease carried off 34,000 in Chichester, England. 40,000 died of pestilence in Scotland, AD 954. Hollingshed gives an account of a terrible plague among cattle, AD 1111, and in Ireland AD 1204. In this year a general plague raged in Europe. In London 200 persons were buried daily, in the Charterhouse yard. A dreadful mortality prevailed in London and Paris, AD 1362 and ’7. Great pestilence in Ireland AD 1383. Endemic destroyed 30,000 in London AD 1407. Great numbers died of plague in Ireland, following famine, AD 1466. Dublin was severely visited with plague AD 1470. Rapin and Salmon give an account of the plague at Oxford, AD 1471, and throughout England AD 1478.

The sweating sickness, sudor Anglicus, first appeared, in England, in 1483, in the army of Henry VII., on his landing at Milfordhaven. A year or two after, it travelled to London, and remained there, with intermissions, for forty years. It then passed over to the continent, and overran Holland, Germany, Flanders, France, Denmark, and Norway. It continued in those countries, from 1525 to 1530; it then returned to England; and was last known there, in 1551. It was a malignant fever, accompanied with very great thirst, delirium, and excessive sweat. Dr. Caius called it “a contagious, pestilential fever of one day, prevailing with a mighty slaughter, as tremendous as the plague of Athens.” Dr. Willis says, “Its malignity was so extreme, that as soon as it entered a city, it made a daily attack, on five or six hundred persons, of whom scarcely one in a hundred recovered.” Strype says, “The plague of sweat this summer, 1551, was very severe, and carried away multitudes of people, rich and poor, especially in London, where, in one day, July 10th, died an hundred people, and the next, one hundred and twenty. From the 8th of this month to the 19th, there died in London, of this sweat, 872.”

Stowe says that, in the 9th year of Henry VII., 1517, half the population, in the capital towns of England, died of the sweating sickness: and that it proved fatal, in three hours. In the year 1500, Stowe also says, that the plague was so terrible in London, that Henry VII. and his court went over to Calais. The plague prevailed in England and Ireland, in 1603, and in London 30,000 persons died. In 1611, 200,000 died of pestilence, in Constantinople; 35,000 persons died of an epidemic in London, in 1625. In 1632 a general mortality prevailed in France; 60,000 died in Lyons. The plague was brought from Sardinia to Naples, in 1656, and 400,000 of the Neapolitans died, in six months. In the great plague of London, of 1665, described by De Foe, 68,596 persons died. In 1720, 60,000 perished of the plague at Marseilles.

An account is given, by the Abbe Mariti, of one of the most awful plagues ever known, which prevailed in Syria, in 1760. In Persia, 80,000 inhabitants of Bassorah, died of the plague, in 1773. In 1792, the plague destroyed 800,000 persons in Egypt. In 1799, 247,000 died of the plague at Fez; and in Barbary, 3000 daily, for several days. In 1804 and ’5, an immense number were destroyed, by the plague, in Gibraltar. At the same place, in 1828, many were swept away, by an epidemic fever, scarce distinguishable from the plague. Verily the vocation of an undertaker is anything but a sinecure! But, in such terrible emergencies, as were hourly occurring, during the prevalence of the great plague of London, such an operator as Pontraci would have cast aside all thoughts of shrouds and coffins. In one single night 4000 died. The hearses were common dead carts; and the continued cry, bring out your dead, rang through every heart. Defoe rates the victims of the plague of 1665, at 100,000.

At present, we have a deeper interest in the pestilence of modern times, though by some accounted of great antiquity. The Indian or Asiatic cholera traversed the north, east and south of Europe, and the countries of Asia, and, in two years, prostrated 900,000 victims. It subsequently appeared in England, at Sunderland, Oct. 26, 1831; in Scotland, at Edinburgh, Feb. 6, 1832; in Ireland, at Dublin, March 3, 1832. The mortality was great, but much less than upon the continent. Between March and August, 1832, 18,000 died of cholera, in Paris. In July and August, 1837, it reappeared in Rome, the Two Sicilies, Genoa, Berlin, and some other cities. Its ravages, in this country, were far less notable, than in many others. It is very wise to cast about us, and determine what we will do, if it should come again, and it is very likely to take us in its progress. But let us not forget, that it will most easily approach us, through our fears; and probably, in no disease, are fear and grief more fatal avant couriers, than in affections of the abdominal viscera.

I am half inclined to the opinion of a charming old lady of my acquaintance, who, after listening to a learned discussion, as to the seat of the soul—the fountain of sensibility—and whether or not it was seated in the conarion—the pineal gland—gave her decided opinion, that it was seated in the bowels.