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¡ like e.g. the revolt of the population of the town Pozsony in 1773, during which the people attacked not only the authorities, but the physicians as well because of the severe precautionary measures entailing heavy economic consequences, were very frequent. Another characteristic feature of the moral effect was the outburst of the persecution of Jews, unknown before in Hungary. On German territories the belief gained ground among fanatic people that the Jews are poisoning the wells and that this is the cause of the plague epidemics. These rumours were spread by foreign merchants coming to Buda and the local German traders were keen to propagate these tales, as it was in their interest to eliminate the Jewish competitors from economic life. The excited, frightened mass gave easily credit to this accusation, this the more so, as in Jewry, living more higiéniça iÿ according to the laws of their religion and in isolation under secular laws mortality caused by the epidemic was indeed considerabily lower. This manifestation repeated itself from 1348 on with every major epidemic of the plague. In 1360 again the Jews were made responsible for the epidemic and this time they were also banished from the country. When in 1523 the contagion had come to Buda, Jewry which in the meantime had returned rose and set off to flee to a place appearing safe. In 1739 — almost 400 years after the first plague charge — many Hungarian villages and towns expelled the Jews on news of the approaching Black Death. The belief that wells poisoned by the Jews are causing the epidemic was alive and acted even during the epidemic of cholera in 1831. How unlimited in space and time these dark superstitions and prejudices are, is shown by the fact that even in 1911, when an epidemic of plague broke out in the Mañçĥųriañ town Charbin textually the same accusation was brought against the local Jewish population 3 2. The people did not trust even the physicians and one reason of the antipathy against plague doctors was just the conviction of the people that the physicians sent by the gentlemen poison the population. This is why they took no medicine either. In the XVIIIth century e.g. in the town Szeged the plague doctors were received with such antipathy that the public health commissioner gave the "pestilentiarius" five soldiers for protection when he wanted to make a medical examiniation. A classic Hungarian example of mistrustfulness against physicians is a report dating from those times on the case in Buda of 1739. The excited population dreading the epidemic broke, armed with guns, pitchforks and clubs into the house of plague physician Ferenc Me¿ssñer, whom they trashed within an inch of his life, then leaving him they went further to settle accounts with the other physicians for epidemics. The two physicians the were after succeeded in flying in time, but two of the "epidemic servants" were caught and immediately killed 3 3. This attitude against the physicians naturally reacted on the public health sevice. The cause of the flight of physicians complained of so frequently was often not fear from the epidemic, but just that distrust increased to animosity with which the people received them. All this explains also why the population ransacked practically in series the plague hospitals and why they resisted against taking their sick to a hospital. In the town Temesvár the population set fire to houses in the neighbourhood of the plague hospital, hoping that the fire will spread also to the hospital; all this to get rid of the hated building. 3 2 Rudolf, W.: D¡e Pest als Krankheit etc. Therapie der Gegenwart. 7. 1963, 808. 3 3 Magyary, Kossa Gy.: Hungarian medical records. Vol. I. Budapest, 1929, 126 (in Hungarian).
