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¡ campaign in Italy

4. The king realized, that to maintain his rule in Naples he had to ensure a direct communication by sea between the two countries. He therefore started new negotiations at Naples with Venice, weakened and having lost much of its population as a consequence of the epidemic of plague having just passed off, but the plague epidemic having broken out with a terrible force put suddenly an end to the negotiations. The old Hungarian chroniclers, primarily Gergely Pethö

5 and Bonfini

6 bear witness, that the plague raged in Hungary in 1348 with might and main, it killed one third or one fourth of the population. In 1350 the plague abated, but flared up again after a pause of ten years in 1360. That year in the city of Buda alone 16.000 people — the major part of the population of the town — were carried off by this disease. The next year of the flare-up of the plague in Hungary was 1380. Conclusions on its dimensions, proportions may be drawn from the fact that king Louis the Great decreed on October 20, 1381 owing to the "still strongly raging plague" a "juristitium", i.e. the discontinuance of all law-suits

7. After sporadic epidemics, restricted to smaller areas, the plague appeared at the turn of the century again with renewed force in 1409. The most important town of Western Hungary, Sopron lost almost all of its population, king Sigismund granted therefore on June 4, 1410 eight years immunity from taxation and other facilities to the new settlers to repeople the town.

8 As soon as the destruction by plague diminished, an epidemic of dysentery broke out in 1439 in the Hungarian army fighting near the town of Titel in Southern Hungary; it made the army unable to fight and became the main reason of the heavy defeat. In 1441 it was again the king's residence, Buda, which was ravaged by plague. King Wladislaw I retired on the advice of his doctors, knowing well the importance of the isolation, to the island of Csepel, which could be well separated and sent home the Polish armies he had brought with him. In 1453 and 1454 it was Lőcse, one of the most important towns of Northern Hungary, which became the principal scene of the epidemic. In 1455 and 1456 Hungary and Transsylvania were swamped with plague by a new wave of the epidemic coming from the Balkans. It was spread by the Hungarian crusaders having returned from Belgrade; it reached its peak in Buda. It was followed by a terrible famine

9. This epidemic ran also through to 1457, but then came a pause of almost two decades. A document of king Matthias Corvinus mentions the plague of 1475 in Western Hungary

1

0. The intensity of the epidemic rose to such level, that in 1478 the king himself sought refuge from it in the large forests. In 1480 the plague attacked already also king Matthias' army and during the siege of Wiener-Neustadt it took its tithe from the Hungarian camp. In 1485 it was the sudor ángliçus of English origin, which caused heavy losses to the population of Hungary. The sudor ángliçus (English sweat or sweating sickness) broke out 4 Haeser, H.: Geschichte der Medizin. Vol. III., 1875, 105. 5 Petĥő, G.: Short Hungarian Chronica. Vienna, 1660 (in Hungarian). 6 Antonii Bonfinii Rerum Ungaricarum Decades. Basileae, 1568. 7 Fejér, G.: Codex diplomaticus Hungáriáé. Budae, torn. IX. 8 Házi, J.: History of the town Sopron. 1923. Vol. I., 33. (in Hungarian). 9 Zichy archives, vol. XII., p. 249. (in Latin). 1

0 Tkalcié, J.. B.: Monum. hist. lib. reg. civitatis Zagrabiae. Vol. II., 377.