Armies -- Medical and sanitary affairs; Epidemics -- History; Medicine, Military -- History; Military hygiene
From Jassy the disease was conveyed to Botoshany, which also lies in
northern Moldavia, and there it soon developed into a severe epidemic
and carried away more than 800 out the town’s 2,500 inhabitants; the
rest fled to Carpathia. ‘The patients,’ says Hecker,[76] ‘lay in tents,
and without care or medical help awaited an almost certain death. The
city itself afforded a sight of complete disorder; the houses were
deserted and stood with open windows and doors, the air was poisoned
with the odour of accumulated refuse, and the general devastation bore
silent witness to the most extreme misery. In addition to that, there
were multitudes of savage, ravenous dogs, which dug up the dead and
menaced the sick.’
Conditions were just as bad in Jassy when Orraeus arrived there on May
10; of the inhabitants and of the Russian garrison more than half had
died, while many streets were entirely depopulated. Since the persons
infected with the disease were placed out in a near-by forest, where
they were left without care, many patients were concealed inside the
houses and their bodies afterwards secretly buried in gardens and
cellars. There was no medical help, since both of the Greek physicians
had fled from the city. On May 20 the Russian troops, at the instigation
of Orraeus, withdrew from Jassy; a convent was converted into a
hospital, and soon after that the pestilence began to subside. By June
22 it had disappeared.
In Wallachia the disease broke out somewhat later than in Moldavia, and
with considerably less severity. In Bucharest it lasted until May.
In Bender, situated in Bessarabia on the Dniester, there was a mild
epidemic of bubonic plague after the city had been stormed on September
16, 1770. The carrying-off of war-booty caused new pestilences in the
army and in the population of Podolia and Little Russia. For a short
time in the last part of September the main army also suffered from
plague in its fixed quarters on the Pruth.
The Turkish army, which passed the winter in Bulgaria, was severely
attacked by plague, but no further information about this outbreak is
available.
In February 1771, Moldavia and Wallachia suffered very little from
plague, although there were occasional outbreaks here and there (for
example, in Bucharest) until the year 1773; but these were always of
short duration.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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