A treatise on plague : dealing with the historical, epidemiological, clinical, therapeutic and preventive aspects of the disease / by W. J. Simpson.

  • Simpson, W. J. (William John), Sir, 1855-1931.
Date:
1905
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Licence: In copyright

Credit: A treatise on plague : dealing with the historical, epidemiological, clinical, therapeutic and preventive aspects of the disease / by W. J. Simpson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by King’s College London. The original may be consulted at King’s College London.

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    caused such loss of life in Sultan Ahmad I.'s army that, leaving many of the dead unburied, he returned to Gujarat. The connection established between Northern India and the endemic areas of plague in Central Asia, Persia, and Irak by the Mongols would facilitate the spread of plague into India in these early periods. In the first decade of the 17th century plague appears to have broken out in the Punjaub and spread over different parts early part of °f India, lasting about eight years. Its commencement the 17th seems to have been connected with disease in Kandahar century. . . in which the land was overrun with mice1. The Emperor Jehangir writing of this epidemic in his memoirs says, 2In this year (1615 A.D.), or rather in the tenth year of my reign, plague (waba) broke out in many parts of Hindustan. It first appeared in the Plague in the districts of the Punjaub and gradually came to Lahore. Punjaub. destroyed the lives of many Mahommedans and Hindtis. It spread through Sirhind and the Doab to Delhi and its dependent districts, and reduced them and the villages to a miserable condition. Now it has wholly subsided. Nawab Mu'tamad Khan referring to the same event in the Ikbdl-ndma3 mentions its precedence by a mouse mortality. When it was about to break out a mouse would rush out of its hole as if mad, and striking itself against the door and the walls of the house, would expire. If immediately after this signal the occupants left the house and went away to the jungle, their lives were saved; if otherwise the inhabitants of the whole village would be swept away by the hand of death. Mu'tamad Khan also adds more information concerning the epidemic than that found in the memoirs of the Emperor Jehangir. Thus, If any person touches the dead, or even the clothes of the dead man, he also could not survive the fatal contact. The effect of the epidemic was comparatively more severe upon the Hindus. In Lahore its ravages were so great that in one house ten or even twenty persons would die, and their surviving neighbours annoyed by the stench would be compelled to desert their habitations. Houses full of the dead were left locked, and no person dared to go near them through fear of his life. It was also very severe in Kashmir where its effects were so great that (as an instance) a darwesh who had performed the last sad offices of washing the corpse of a friend, the very next day 1 Bombay Gazetteer, Vol. iv. c. xii. p. 218. - The History of India as told by its own Historians. The posthumous papers of the lute. Sir If. M, Eliot, K.O.B. Edited and continued by Professor John Dowson, Vol. vx. p. 316. 1875. 3 Ibid. p. 406.