Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 62.djvu/356

350 again suffered a mortality of over 10,000, while the disease continued to claim numerous victims in other parts of England and on the continent. Later in the century (1656) some of the Italian cities suffered devastating epidemics. The mortality in the city of Naples was in the neighborhood of 300,000, in Genoa 60,000, in Rome 14,000. The smaller mortality in the last-named city has been ascribed to the sanitary measures instituted by Cardinal Gastaldi. Up to this time prayers, processionals, the firing of cannons, etc., had been the chief reliance for the arrest of pestilence, with what success is shown by the brief historical review thus far presented. But this enlightened prelate inaugurated a method of combating the plague and other infectious maladies which, with increasing knowledge and experience in the use of scientific preventive measures, has given us the mastery of these pestilential diseases, and has been the principal factor in the extinction of bubonic plague from the civilized countries of Europe.

But it was long after the time of Cardinal Gastaldi before sanitary science was established upon a scientific basis and had acquired the confidence of the educated classes. Indeed, the golden age of preventive medicine has but recently had its dawn, and sanitarians at the present day often encounter great difficulty in convincing legislators and the public generally of the importance of the measures which have been proved to be adequate, when properly carried out, for the prevention of this and other infectious maladies.

We have now arrived in our review at the period of the 'great plague cf London.' For some years this city had been almost if not entirely free from the scourge, but in the spring of 1665 it again appeared and within a few months caused a mortality of 68,596 in a population estimated at 460,000. This, however, does not fairly represent the percentage of mortality among those exposed, for a large proportion of the population flew from the city to escape infection.

Upon the continent the disease prevailed extensively, especially in Austria, Hungary and Germany. The epidemic in Vienna in 1679 caused a mortality of 76,000. In 1681 the city of Prague lost 83,000 of its inhabitants. During the last quarter of this century the disease disappeared from some of the principal countries of Europe. According to Hirsch it disappeared from England in 1679, from France in 1668, from Holland about the same time, from Germany in 1683 and from Spain in 1681. In Italy it continued to prevail to some extent until the end of the century.

At the beginning of the eighteenth century bubonic plague prevailed in Constantinople and at various points along the Danube; from here it extended in 1704 to Poland, and soon after to Silesia, Lithuania, Germany and the Scandinavian countries. The mortality in Stockholm