EPIDEMICS AND THE STARS.

Kumara Times, Issue 832, 31 May 1879, Page 4

EPIDEMICS AND THE STARS.

The following communication has been addressed to the Pall Mall Gazette:— It is to the intense prejudice educated people have against astrology—confounding the astrology of the ancients and of the Middle Ages with the nonsense of the gypsies—that we are indebted for our ignorance of the original epidemics. As Hecker remarks :—" Of the astral influence, which was considered to have originated the 'great mortality,' physicians and learned men were as.'completely convinced of as the facts of its reality." The fatal error they made, however, was in supposing that the influence was due to the conjunction of the planets, instead of to the positions of the planets in their orbits. Omitting the nonsense of fortune telling, the reasons why people of the present day do not believe in planetary influence are twofold : first it is held to betoken ignorance and superstition—points on which educated people are very sensitive; and, secondly, they cannot imagine how such tiny objects can effect their great globe, unconsciously forgetting that our earth among the planets is as a marble among cannon-balls. From a lengthy study of great terrestrial phenomena, I can come to no other conclusion than that they are intimately connected; and I shall in as few words as possible, lay before your readers my reasons for such a conclusion. About eight years ago I spent many months accumulating information on cholera throughout the world, from 1816 to 1871. I tabulated my results, threw them into the form of a curve, and was surprised to find that there had occurred a great outbreak about every 17 years, arid that these outbreaks took place alternately at maxima and minima of bud.-spots Certainly the sun-spots could not have produced the cholera, for there was a great outbreak when the spots were very plentiful, and the next when they were very few. But that there was a connection I felt convinced, and also that they were both in the nature of effects. I suggested in a paper on the subject I read at the time before the Royal Historical Society that the cause would probably be found in the influence of the planets, and in their approach to the sun. These were minor outbreaks which I could not explain but I felt sufficient confidence in my results to state (see Nabwe, May, 1872) .that, as there had been great outbreaks in 1815-17, 1832-4, |IB4B-58, 1865 7 we might confidently expect the next in 1883 4. I left the subject for seven years. Meanwhile I worked at the subject of sun-spots, and was rewarded by finding that the phenomena for magnetic storms, and for auroras was 119 yearß, the period of Jupiter's anomalistic year, and that these phenomena were always least when nearest tbe sun. I then turned to terres trial magnetism, and found that the needle of the compass, which at London was moving east up to 1580, and west till 1816, and east ever since, follows the movements of a strong magnetic pole which Sir Jamas Ross found in 1830 in Boothia, but which has now, I hold, travelled west to Prince Albert Land, and has moved at such a rate that it will complete its revolution round the pole of the earth in about 500 years. On examining the accumulated evidence in regard to the dip of the needle, 1 found that the magnetic pole must be in the atmosphere over the place where it appears to be in the earth.

In the midst of this work a little incident occurred which induced me to write to the Registrar General for the number of deaths in England for the last 40 years, which he kindly sent me. I immediately fonnd that what I suspected was true, that the number of deaths in England was greatest, on an average over the whole period, every six yeais. I threw the numbers into the form of a curve, and under it placed the curve represented by Jupiter's orbit during the same period, and found that whenever Jupiter was at two points equally distant from his nearest point to the sun (corresponding to our September and March) the deaths in England were greatest. (A. short paper on the subject will appear in the next number of the Proceedings of the Statisti cal Society.) If this is true for England, it should be true for the death-rate of the world. On examining the curve for cholera over the world from 1816 to 1871, which I drew out seven years ago, I found that this held good. I am at present engaged in examining the death-rate of the world for the last 40 years as far as possible. The outbreak of plague directed my intention to that subject. I examined a magnetic chart of the world and found that the lines of no decimation (i.e., the lines that indicate where the needle points to true north, and therefore the lines in which the greatest magnetic power is manifested) are advancing west, at the average rate of about one-seventh of a degree annually, over the regions which are the present epidemic-stricken quarters of the globe -Russia, Persia, United States, Brazil, and Western China. As the magnetic poles advance these lines advance, and epidemics on man and beast, accompany them. On circulating back, I find that the line which is now passing across Russia must have passed over that region 600 years ago. This will take us back to the middle of the fourteenth 'century ; and with similar magnetic con ditions we have the same epedemic—the Black Death. We know that plague devastated Europe more or lees for the next two centuries, cvlminating in the Great Plague of London in 1665, and curiously enough just at the time when a line of declinatioji was advancing over England. It occurred to me that Neptune might be the cause of the movement of the magnetic pole. On examing the movement of the planet in its orbit, I found that those of the needle varied in accordance, with those of that planet while

it makes three revolutions. The magnetic poles make an eccentric circle round the pole of the earth ; this eccentrictyl found was due to some influence at a maximum of about 80 years. On examining the movements and position of Uranus, I found that they were such as to account -for the anomaly. 1 have fully detailed the subject in a paper I sent to the Royal Astronomical Society; they have announced it ; whether they will have the courage to have it read is another matter. I have, sir, occupied bo much of your space that 1 will not go into other curious points, especially some relating to the atmospheric change which produces plague, and a possible remedy. In conclusion, I would say that within the next seven years there will happen that which has not happened for hundreds of years ; all the planets at or near their nearest point to the sun about the same time. It is true of the earth that its magnetic intensity is greatest about the time when it is near the sun. The same is probably true of all the planets. Therefore we may expect extraordinary magnetic phenomena during the next seven years, and great plagues, which will manifest themselves in all their intensity when Jupiter is about three years from his perihelion—that is, in 1883.—1 am, sir, your obedient servant, B. G. Jenkins, F.R.A.S. Dulwich, March 6.