A PLAGUE-STRICKEN CITY.

Temuka Leader, Issue 1268, 22 November 1884, Page 3

A PLAGUE-STRICKEN CITY.

There is lying before ns (Pall Mali Budget) as we write a lady’s letter fresh from tbe Naples Post-office, It is pierced through and through in four places by a knife, in order to permit of the more effective fumigation of its contents, although the cholera germ would probably laugh at such a precaution. The writer says :—“ From the moment they let loose upon us the Italian workmen from Marseilles and Toulon I felt sure that we should have the cholera here, in spite of all the quarantines and cordons sanitairies. The soil was indeed prepared for its advent. The Bassi, where the poorer Neapolitans live in squalid misery, is in a dirty, foetid state, tlie hovels have no windows and no water-closets ; they are simply human burrows with a hole called a door, and no other means of egress or ventilation. Nothing was done to cleanse this filthy quarter, and there the disease has raged and is raging. When it broke out there was a sauve yuipent of the heau monde, and as the rich and fashionable fled, there streamed in from all parts of Italy doctors and nurses, only asking to be employed in combating the disease. From tbe King to the chemists all have done nobly, in the midst of scenes too trying to describe. There has not been tune to make coffins for the dead. The corpses are simply put into sacks. I hardly ever go out now, but having to buy a dress I drove out to-day. I came home without buying anything. I could not bear driving about the streets. Everything made be so sad. We met six processions of women (1 have since heard that they were of the worst class) with hair hanging down their backs, chanting in hoarse and tuneless voices horrible dirges for tbe dead. Men accompanied them with plates, asking alms, and insulting those who refused to give. I did not meet a single carriage containing any person known in Naples. Many of the shops never open, and all are closed at three o’clock. The papers do not tell you half the horror and gloom that hangs over this City of the Dead.”

This letter and others which have been received from the cholera-stricken districts in Italy oflvr many points of resemblance to descriptions of former plagues in the some localities. The panic among the lower classes, which has been growing into delirious fright as the number of deaths increased at Naples ; the disorganistion and interrupted communication. o , seem almost a repetition of the occurrences iu 1348, of which Boccaccio writes that "such was the public distress that the laws, hum»n and divine, were no more regarded," and that the citizens and rela tions showed so little regard to other that "a brother fled from his brother, a wife from her husband, and a parent from its own child." The condition of the poor at that time was much what to-day it appears to be at Naples. "With regard to the lower sort and many of the middling rnnk," says Boccaccio, in his introduction to " The Decameron," " the scene was still more affecting ; for they staying at home, either through poverty or hopes of succour in distress, fell sick daily by thousands, and, having, nobody to attend them, generally died; some breathed their last in the streets and others shut up in their own houses, when the stench that came from them made the first discovery of their death in the> neighborhood." Things are not quite so bat to-day ; even in Naples there is some progress. The disease which showed itself in such " a sad and wonderful manner," sqatched a w ay over 100,000 victims between March and July of 1348 ; the deaths from cholera during the last fortnight having not been much over 2038 in Italy. A striking picture of the plague-stricken Naples, which is almost equally familiar, is given in Mr Shorthbuse's "John Inglesant," which for the sake of its grim and ghastly beauty we take the liberty of reprinting: —" In 1537 human precaution and terror became cruel and merciless, all bond of fellowship and of society was loosened, and Naples the city of thoughtless pleasure and of reckless mirth, a city under a blue and cloudless sky, by au azure sea glowing in the unsurpassable brilliancy of the sun, was turned into a charnel-house —nay, into a hell and p] !ice of torment." The Naples D f to-day although not devastated in the same degree as then, bears resemblance to Mr Shorthouse's description of the city at the time of the plague : "The streets were full of people—more so, indeed, than is usual even in Naples ; for business was at a stand, the houses were lull of infection, and a terrible restlessness drove everyone here and there. The stately rows of houses and palaces and 'he lofty churches looked down on a changing, fleeting, restless crowd—unoccupied, Bpeaking little, walking hither and thither with no aim, every few minutes turning back and retracing their steps. Every quarter of an hojr or thereabout a confused procession of priests and laymen, singing doleful and despairing misereres, and bearing the sacred Host, with canopy and crosses, came from one of the side streets or out of one of the churches, and proceeded along the Strada, As these processions passed, every one prostrated themselves, with an excess and desperate earnestness of devotion, and nviny followed the Host. , . . In this city the mighty, unseen hand suddenly struck down its prey, and without warning seized upon th«wretched conscience, all unprepared for soch a blow. The cast of a pantomime is a strange sight beneath the glare and light of midday ; but there were quacks and nobles, jugglers, and soldiers, comic actors and ' filosofi,' pleasure seekers and monks, gentry and beggare, all surpriseo suddenly by the light and glareof the deathangel's torch, and orowded upon one level stage of mi-sery and despair." It appears that then, as now, the priests were the greatest benefactors to the people ; no opposition wis shown to them as there was to medical men, and the good work done more than three centuries ago seems to be repeated. Some of them fled at the time of John Inglesant ; a greal many died; but those that were left behind we are told, "ran to all houses most infected and to those streets which were most thronged with putrified bodies, and into the hospitals where the plague was hottest; and confessing the sick and attending them in their last gasp, and receiving their poisonous breath as though it were the scent of a rose." And as in the nineteenth century the opinions differ on the cause and spread of cholera, *o in the sixteenth century, when the Neapolitan | physioan says of the plague : —" It is a i terrible enemy to mankind that walks stained with slaughter by night. We

know not whence it comes. Before it are beautiful gardens, crowded habitations and populous cities ; behind it unfruitful emptiness and howling desolation. Before it the guards and arnves of mighty princes are as dead men, and physicians are no protection either to the s : ck or to themselves. Some imngine that it comes from the cities of the Efist, some that it arises from poverty and famine, and from the tainted and perishing flesh and unripe fruits and hurtful herbs which, in timws of scarcity and dearth, the staiving people greedily devour to satisfy their craving hunger. Others contend that it is inflicted immediately by the hand of God. These are mostly the priests. When we have puzz'ed our reason and are at our wits' end through ignorance, we come to that." ".See Naples and die," wis the old saying. It might be applied to the fair city of Southern Italy to-day, but not in its original sense.