The Retreat of Plague from Central Europe, 1640-1720: A Geomedical Approach

There is a general agreement that the plague effectively disappeared from western and central Europe by the year 1722, following a decline of disease activity initiated in the 1640s. ¹ I have recently completed a study of the state of plague in central Europe for the period 1560-1640, ² in which I examined the distribution of plague in quantitative and spatio-temporal terms during the terminal years of the dominant phase of plague in central Europe. ² The present study applies a similar approach to the immediately succeeding period, 1640-1720, when plague activity was in decline. It affords an opportunity to compare the characteristics of two successive, contrasting periods, and to consider the process by which plague disappeared from central Europe.

One of humanity's lasting uncertainties results from our limited ability to predict and influence the rise and fall of individual epidemic diseases. These cycles of disease activity call into question our competence to master our environment and to progress on our own terms, while also challenging in a broad sense the effectiveness and impact of medical care. The demographic implications of such epidemic cycles are forcefully expressed by the rise and decline of plague in Europe. For three centuries following its introduction into Europe in 1347, which led immediately to massive losses, plague remained a dominant cause of crisis mortality. While the population increased gradually after its drastic fall of 1347-52, plague losses continued to act as a most important check on population growth.

The decline and subsequent disappearance of plague in the eighteenth century coincided with the initiation of the long-term accelerated rise in European population. ³ Other epidemic diseases--dysentery, the continued fevers of typhus and typhoid, some exanthemata, anthrax, and later smallpox, cholera, and tuberculosis--became at one time or another noteworthy diseases, but none of these had an impact of the order of plague during its dominant phase. For the earlier period, 1560-1640, plague activity in extensive regions of central Europe commonly led to a series of losses in the range of 8 to 15 percent of the population. ⁴ The decline of plague is not proposed as the direct cause of the following three-century-long rise of Europe's population, as this process involved an interactive complex of biological, economic, social, and political components. ⁵ Nevertheless, the subsidence of plague activity was one necessary prerequisite for the full attainment of the population rise: a continuing sequence of plague mortalities of the order of 10 percent of the population would have drastically altered the extended increase.

Plague Routes

As a preliminary to the survey of the spatio-temporal distribution of plague in central Europe, an identification of the origins and major corridors of epidemic activity will be useful. In the west, the most influential site was the Low Countries (Belgium and the Netherlands). Documentation of the entry of plague into this most important trading and urban region suggests two key origins: (1) carriage by ship from the Mediterranean and the Baltic coast, most particularly from Copenhagen or the grain ports of East Prussia (Poland); or (2) a land-based progression down the Rhine valley. Once established in the Low Countries, plague could spread by ship to ports of the North Sea and Baltic regions, or by land eastward along the northern coast of Europe, and on occasions across the extensive German northern plain into the interior of Europe. An even more direct entry into the interior followed a corridor from the Low Countries up the Rhine into German Rhineland, eventually as far south as Alsace and Switzerland; while in the reverse direction, plague in the south could attain the Low Countries.

The most important lasting plague focus to the east of central Europe was the Turkish-occupied Balkans. From this source two major plague corridors approached the west...