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¡ A very harmful influence was effected on the population by the flagellant movement, supported, but later already forbidden, by the Church superiority. This psychotropic epidemic — which according to concordant sources had started from Hungary — rushed in several waves through Europe; progressing like an avalanche it carried more and more people with it, so that finally tens of thousands marched on the highroads of Western and Central Europe flogging themselves

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9. Naturally these penitent armies, mortifying themselves in their fear from the plague, played a much more harmful role, than the psychic effect exorcised on the frigthened people by the flagellants, in carrying the epidemics further, in spreading them from one country to the other. The flagellant movement was in fact a form of "group hysteria"

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0. There is no doubt at the same time that the most devoted and courageous members of the Church did not forsake the faithful amidst the raving of the worst epidemics, but were present at the bed of the dying, consoled and breathed courage into the sick, improving their strength of mind and with it the resistance of the organism against the disease — until they fell themselves victims to it. III. In Hungary the secular power played only rather late an active role in defence against the epidemics. Though it had been realized in ancient times already that prevention and its only manner, isolation is the most important means of fighting the plague and though erudite physicians did not cease emphasizing this in the Middle Ages either, this did not become generally known. The reason is, that medical works emphasizing the importance of prophylaxis and isolations, the various "regimen sanitatis" were primarily written for rulers, prelates and lords, so that their substance did not become public property and could even less reach the masses of the population. From the XlVth century on many so-called "regimen pestilentiae" (attitude to be followed at times of epidemics of plague) had been published. The authors dealt not only with the symptomatology of the disease and with the treatment of the symptoms (causal treatment remained unknown for thousand of years), but discussed the only efficent manner of preventing the spread of the plague, and in connection with it of all epidemic diseases of those times: isolation; in their works they took into consideration both medical aspects and those of public health. The plague-tracts were spread all over Europe, many of them were published in England too. It is no mere chance that the first medical incunabulum in England was a "plague tract'

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1. A physician from Ragusa, Bartholomaçus Squarcialupis de Plumbino spent quite some time at the court of Sigismund, king of Hungary, in Buda. This highly qualified doctor, whose views on public health and on epidemics are not obsolete even to-day in many respects, wrote in a manuscript dedicated to the king long pages on the importance of the prevention of plague, of isolation.

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2 But he was not the only physician who eneavoured to 1

9 Slicker, G.: Abhandlungen aus der Seuchengeschichte. Giessen, 1908, torn. I. 72. Cfr. Hecker, J.K.F.: Die grossen Volkskrankheiten des Mittelalters. Ed. A. Hirsch. Berlin, 1865. 2

0 Robak, A. A.: History of Psychology and Psychiatry. New York, 1961, 219. 2

1 Singer, D. W.: Some plague tracts. Proç. Roy. Soc. Med. 9. 1916, 155. 2

2 Schultheisz, E.: Colcodeus seu liber de peste. Sudhoffs Arch. 44. 1960, 333.