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¡ call by such view the attention of the rulers and influential lords on this question, It was not their fault, that almost another 200 years had to go by, before intervention of the state power became regular in Hungary in fighting epidemics. There are many examples of local measures — primarily decrees issued by towns — trying to check a threatening epidemic. One of the most characteristic examples is the establishment of the quarantine of Ragusa, the first institution of this kind in history. In Hungary the first information on a town escaping the plague by applying a quarantine dates from 1510. The Transsylvanian physician Salzmann was able to preserve Nagyszeben by a strong and consistently enforced quarantine from plague badly raging in the surroundings 2 3. This successful! measure was the result of co-operation between the highly qualified physician and the town council not afraid of innovations, a co-operation which was unfortunately an exception in those times. In Central Europe the quarantine as central precautionary measure against the plague appeared first in the letters patent of Ferdinand I issued by him for Styria on September 15, 1521. Ferdinand wanted then to preserve Styria from plague raging already in Hungary by accepting the principles exposed by J. Salzmann in his work entitled "Ein nützlicher Ordnung und Regiment wider die Pestilenz" and making the quarantine i.e. isolation the central point of his measures. In 1562, when Hungary was no more ruled by Hungarian kings, but by German-Roman emperors, who were at the same time kings of Hungary, the "Ordo pestis" was issued, which contained all important principles of defence against the plague. These letters patent summarized all provisions, which had already been published as detail instructions. This decree gained a particular importance by the fact, that it served as example for all regulations against epidemics issued later. The "Ordo pestis" of 1562 contains as basic thesis the modern, generally accepted and proved viewpoint, that infectious diseases are primarily spread by the individual suffering from that disease or carrying it in him in a latent phase (either because he has the pathogens directly in himself or is a carrier of intermediary plague flees). The plague decree issued in 1691 contains a new regulation of the quarantine and orders already a 40 days isolation, therefore a real quarantine 2 4. In later centuries it was state power which directed also he defence of counties and towns against local epidemics; before the self-governing administrative corporations had decided, whether to do something against the epidemic or not. The positive intentions of state power naturally more than once apparently infringed the economic and other interests of the county or town affected and they showed a violent resistance to measures taken in their interest. On August 9, 1601 the captain-general of Northern Hungary asked the council of the town Kassa not to hold the yearly fair in view of the plague raging in near Poland. The town council was however more afraid of losing probable high profits, than from the threatening epidemic refused to carry out the instruction and saw reason only later, when the priest of the town had also fallen a victim to the disease. In 1625 there was another flare-up, that time the plague started from Hungary, rushed through the entire Continent and reached also England. A German chronicle published a few decades later contains the following account of this epidemic: "Die Pest ist aus Ungern in Polen, Italien, Deutschland und Engelland kommen, hat allenthalben viel tausend Menschen weggefressen auch das künfftige Jahr noch nicht auffgehö2 3 Linzbauer op. c¡t. Tom. I. 142. 2 4 Cfr. Kolloñ¡çs, L.: Ut¡l¡ssima cautela tempore pestis ... ñųper expensis Camerae Hungaricae Posoniensis in lųçern data. Viennae, 1691. — Kolloñ¡çs, L.: Ordo pestis ... Pestbeschreibung und ¡nfect¡onsordnung. Wien, 1727.
