Schultheisz Emil: Traditio Renovata. Tanulmányok a középkor és a reneszánsz orvostudományáról / Orvostörténeti Közlemények – Supplementum 21. (Budapest, 1997)
24. Short history of epidemics in Hungary until the Great Cholera Epidemic of 1831
Z^oo¡ ret" 2 5. In 1652 there was again an outbreak of plague in Poland and palatine Wesselényi forbade therefore to Kassa citizens trade with Poland. This measure in itself was however not enough, as in 1653 plague broke out again in Kassa. At the beginning of the XVIIIth century we find more and more decrees aiming at the localization of an epidemic. The Hungarian Royal Decree published on November 23, 1709 contains a long list of towns, where quarantine stations and lazarets are to be set up. The government endeavoured to prevent the epidemics not only with a quarantine, but also by providing the quarantine stations with physicians. In 1710 for instance, when physicians were very scarce in Hungary, the central authorities sent medical officers for fighting the plague. But at those times the local authorities did not neglect either everywhere the defence. Thus there is evidence, that the two sister-towns, Buda and Pest, united later under the name of Budapest, situated on the two sides of the Danube, defended themselves during the plague of 1738 also against each other by a quarantine. In the middle of the XVIIIth century the central authority considered guarding of quarantine lines surrounding the quarantines and certain areas a very serious duty. In 1740 persons crossing illegally the quarantine line risked the penalty of death. Unfortunately Austrian soldiers stationed in the country often scorned these salutary regulations and severe consequences naturally appeared very soon. Measures of local authorities sometimes went very much in detail. So e.g. the regulations of the town Győr of 1620 ordered that houses with plague be marked and sealed. There are also penal sanctions here: anybody who does not declare a person suffering from the plague or who removes the seal from the house shall be sent to prison. But penal sanctions are also applied by the central power: king Leopold I decreed that any person entering the territory of the country at the time of an epidemic from an infected or suspicious place without proper papers — therefore by evading the quarantine station — shall be put to death. Communication was only permitted in possession of such papers. Those for instance, who in 1734 coming from Poland were able to present a reliable passport are permitted to cross the Hungarian frontier. Where a severe quarantine ordered by the authority was enforced, the result was in most cases satisfactory. This is shown by the report dated 1708 of doctor Ausfeldt, plague physician of the town Szeged, according to which only 182 had died at Szeged, while at Arad with almost the same population — where no isolation had been enforced — the number of the dead was more than three thousand 2 6. The efficiency of however salutary public health measures issued by central authorities suffered damage by the fact that the local authorities considered them as unwarrantable interference, an endeavour of centralization and if possible omitted to enforce them. Several examples testify even that when the central authorities prohibited for all of the country the gathering of masses, local authorities put co-operation with the Church before the enlightened instructions of the central power and did not forbid holding church ceremonies, visiting the church and cemetries in masses, things absolutely dangerous for spreading the disease, in some places they even insisted on these ceremonies and visits. An ordinance dated May 5, 1739 of the office of the governor general established with sorrow, that in the town Karcag more than 400 people had died from the plague, one of the reasons being that burial and 2 5 Allgemeine Schau-Bühne der Welt, oder Beschreibung der vornehmsten Welt-Geschichte ... Françkfurt a/M., 1699, Bd. XXV., 302. 2 6 Ausfeld, J. C. : Relatio medica de peste urbis Szegedinae in Hungaria anno 1708 saeviente. Szegedini, 1708.
