Plague in China

Abstract

IN the “Encyclopaedia Britannica” (ninth edition, vol. xix. p. 168), Dr. J. F. Payne writes: “It is remarkable that of late years reports have come of the occurrence of Oriental plague in China. It has been observed in the province of Yunnan since 1871 … it appears to be endemic, though there are rumours of its having been brought from Burmah, and become more noticeable after the suppression of rebellion in that province [1872].” However, the following passage I have lately found in Hung Liang-Kih's “Peh-Kiang-Shi-Hwa” (British Museum copy, 15,316, a, tom. iv., fol. 4, b), bears witness to the much earlier occurrence of the pest in Yunnan, inasmuch as the author, who was born in 1736, and died in 1809, speaks of his contemporary dead thereby:—“Shi Tau-Nan, the son of Shi Fan, now the Governor of Wang-Kiang, was notorious for his [poetic] gift, and was only thirty-six years old when he died. … Then, in Chau-Chau [in Yunnan] it happened that in daytime strange rats appeared in the houses, and lying down on the ground, perished with blood-spitting. There was not a man who escaped the instantaneous death after being infected with the miasma. Tau-Nan composed thereon a poem, entitled “Death of Rats,” the masterpiece of his; and a few days after, he himself died from this queer rat epidemic.”