Cholera and La Grippe

Feilding Star, Volume XIV, Issue 37, 13 September 1892, Page 4

Cholera and La Grippe

By some theorists China was credited with the dissemination of the influenza plague, which, says the Illustrated London News of Juiy 16th did seem to travel from the Frowery Land into Russia soon after the great Yellow River broke from its banks, inundating a vast track of country and drowning hundreds of villages. Whether by mere coincidence of time or otherwise, the pest came a'ter the flood ; and it was immediately pro* pbesitd that cholera would follow upon Ihe pest. Now, it happens that mo.- 1 of the plagues tuat ravaged -hug laud in the fourteenth century (and there were at least seven or eijilit distinctive visitations, including the tenor called the Black Death) were preceded by heavy rains and floods, pouring upun land which was not drained as it is now ; and it further happens that the Chinese annals of that period record wide and destructive inundations, followed by pestilince. This seems to countenaoce the view of theorists aforesaid. Before the Black Death appeared in England there was a fall of rain that lasted for months almost without intermission : so say the historians.