The bubonic plague has been from time im- memorial the periodic scourge of Bible lands. It is mentioned in the oldest medical literature (Hippoc. Aph. iv. 52, Epid. iii. 55). Ruffus mentions a visitation of plague in Syria about B.C. 300; and the dreadful epidemic in the reign of Justinian, about A.D. 544, is graphically re- corded by the historians as leaving whole districts depopulated. Its outbreaks are sudden, it spreads rapidly, and simultaneously affects large bodies of
eople. At its onset it is remarkably fatal: in the ast visitation in this country (1664-1669) 4000 died in London within the first week, and during the period of the epidemic 70,000 died in that city, about 1 in 5 of the population. It has a short incubation period ; ‘in highly malignant epidemics the disease may show itself within three or four hours of exposure to infection’ (Manson, Trop. Diseases, 156; see also cases cited by Pruner, p- 396). The bubo or glandular swelling in the groin or axilla often develops within a few hours. Death generally ensues (in more than 60 per cent. of those attacked) within the first three days(Colvill). In the type called pestis siderans, death often occurs within twelve to twenty-four hours. In one village, out of 534 inhabitants 311 died within three days (see Hirsch, op. cit. i, 495, and Allbutt’s Syst. of Med. i. 917).
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There are in the Levitical code no sanitary pre- cautions given to Proven its spreading. This is probably due to the belief that it was a divine Judgment supernaturally inflicted, and to be stayed only by prayer and repentance. Had the Israelites kept themselves, as they were bidden, from inter- course with their neighbours, it is probable that they would have remained tolerably free from it, as it is not endemic anywhere in Palestine, and is always propagated along trade routes. In this respect 1t was really a punishment for breaches of their law. In Yaanith 3. 4, the inhabitants of a district visited by a plague are directed to fast, and to blow trumpets, while their neighbours are to fast without Haga trumpets. Baba Kamma recommends staying at home and fleeing the society of others in time of plague (60. 2),
Emerods.—In the account of the Philistine plague, after the capture of the ark (1S 5°”) it is said that the people of Ashdod and the other cities were smitten with emerods (AV). The word is o5y ‘Ophdlim, for which Kéré substitutes ony téhorim (the latter is used in the text in 1S 6''+!7). These words mean ‘swellings or rounded eminences.’ Aquila renders φαγεδαίνης ἕλκος; LXX B has in 1 5. 5° ἐξέζεσεν αὐτοῖς els rds ναῦς [A ἕδρας ; cf. BA in v.® καὶ ἐπάταξεν. . . els τὰς ἕδρας αὐτῶν, and Vulg. in secretiori parte natium, v.*]. From comparison with Ps 78, where God is said to have smitten His enemies on the hinder part (RV ‘ backwards’), it was supposed that the tumours were on the buttocks, and they were therefore identified with hemorrhoids. There is, however, nothing in the narrative to bear out this exegesis, and RV trans- lates ‘tumours.’ The disease was epidemic, in- fections, often fatal; was attended with tumours somewhere about the lower part of the abdomen, and these were so definite that they could be It is certain, therefore,
represented by models, that it was no kind of hemorrhoid, and the proba- bility is great that this also was the plague
whose buboes were the tumours. This view is advocated by Hitzig (Urgesch. d. Philist. 201) and Wellhausen (Samuel, 64), and it satisties all the conditions, this being of all the diseases of the East the most likely to have set in with the fatal suddenness described in the text. The same word oceurs in Dt 2857, and from the analogy of the Syriac word used in the passage, 56. »ος ἐς which is akin to ον ἐ, meaning tenesmus, Driver suggests that the reference may be to dysenteric tumours (Comm. on Deut. 1895, xx and 310); but there are very seldom any tumours in dysentery, while tenesmus and evacuations of blood are common in the plague. The images of the emerods are called in Vale. quinque anos aureos.
Disorders involving the digestive organs men- tioned in the Bible are either due to malaria or are the results of intemperance. The case of the father of Publius was one of acute dysentery. The disease is called in AV Ac 985 bloody flux; in Gr. πυρετὸς kai δυσεντερία. Sir W. Aitken gives Malta as one of the six districts in which this disease is most prevalent and most fatal (ii. 841). The pres- ence of hemorrhage shows that the disease in this instance was of the ulcerative or gangrenous type, either of which is a most dangerous form. he germs of this disease are water-borne, so it is common in swampy, moist localities, as by river- sides. In Egypt its mortality is said by Griesinger to be about 36 per cent.
The description of the disease of which Jehoram died (2 Ch 21"), which began at a period of a general epidemic, lasted two years, and was incurable, as in its course the bowels were shed or fell out, tallies with the condition met with in some forms of throric dysentery with sloughing of the intestine,
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‘one of the most hopeless and intractable forms of disease which the physician has to treat’ (Aitken, li. 859). Dutrouleau records an example of this kind in which about 13 inches of the mucous and submucous coats of the colon were evacuated. In certain forms, also, there is a diphtheritie exuda- tion on the mucous membrane, which may be detached in larger or smaller masses. In Papyrus Ebers xiii there is an account of a disease of this kind, with swelling of the abdomen, and pain, pale face, aching head, the abdomen hot to the touch, and with a discharge of a black or white material. This was called the shn disease.