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¡ But wars were at the same time also the greatest causes and transmitting agents of further epidemics and this statement applies pa ¡çų ar ÿ to Hungary. In the second half of the XVIth century as a result of the eternal campaigns the once flourishing and permanently cultivated regions became depopulated, they became marshlands, the woods were destroyed and whole country districts lost their character as culture areas. That part of the Hungarian population which had got through the diseases gradually "adopted itself' to the bad drinking water, the putrid evaporation of the marshes, the clouds of mosquitos, but the many foreing mercenaries suffered heavier losses from the new disease, the "morbus hungaricus" than from the Turks. This is how Hungary became the "cemetry of Germans". The foreign mercenaries returning home from the 1566 campaign introduced the epidemic disease (which may be identified retrospectively as typhus exanthematicus) into Vienna, whence it wandered to Germany, the Netherland and then to England, killing everywhere countless people 3 4. Castles and their immediate surroundings as permanent, stable centres of war obviously suffered most of all from the ravages of the epidemics. Many people were crowded together on relatively small areas, in narrow places, without canalization and these were ideal hotbeds of epidemics. Castle guards were naturally in an even more difficult situation than the mobile armies, which observed at those times already certain precautionary sanitary measures. A good example is the case of the most outstanding officer of the engineer corps of those times, serving in the Imperial army, count Marsigli, who protected his own health and that of is soldiers from the epidemic raging in the Turkish camp in a vey ingenious manner. Under the peace of Karlovac conluded with the Turks the fortresses on the Turkish-Hungarian borders had to be destroyed and the border lines had to be established exactly. General Marsigli, entrusted with with this work, had therefore permanent negotiations with the Turks. His negotiations were made very difficult by the fact the Turkish camp was much infected with plague. The two camps took positions on the two sides of the river Bisztra and on the wish of Marsigli verbal negotiations were also held — with the help of interpreters sent to pontoon bridges — over the river, absolutely avoiding direct contact. As a result of this expendient measure and of other severe dispositions of Marsigli the part of Hungary situated this side of the Bisztra remained free from the epidemic 3 5. In the overwhelming majority of cases however it was impossible, among the public health conditions of those times, to preserve the armies from the epidemics and the loss in men by epidemics of the country which was in an eternal state of deployment exceeded for centuries — often even several times — the number of persons who died as a consequence of events of war. The only positive effect of the military was that sometimes, when the frontiers were closed against the introduction of epidemics from abroad, it enforced the effectiveness of their provisions. But this was only the case in later centuries, at the same time it was not seldom that just the undisciplined units themselves infringed the precautionary measures ordered by the civil authorities. To give an idea in numbers of the losses caused by some major epidemics we mention that more than 300,000 persons died during the last great epidemic of plague in Hungary 3 4 For details concerning morbus hungaricus see Gÿðrÿ, T.: Morbus hungaricus. Budapest, 1931 (in Hungarian). 3 5 Münster, L.: L'opera sanitaria del Generale Marsigli etc. Rivisla delle Sc. Med., 1932, Vol. XXIII, 115.
