Great Plague of Vienna

The Great Plague of Vienna occurred in 1679 in Vienna, Austria, the imperial residence of the Austrian Habsburg rulers. From contemporary descriptions, the disease is believed to have been bubonic plague, which is caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis, carried by fleas associated with the black rat and other rodents. The city was crippled by the epidemic, which recurred fitfully into the early 1680s, claiming an estimated 76,000 residents.

Vienna, located on the Danube River, was a major trading crossroads between east and west. As a result of this traffic, the city had suffered from episodic plague outbreaks since the first wave of "Black Death" in the fourteenth century. The city was crowded and densely built. Descriptions indicate that there were no public sewers or drainage systems, with stinking mounds of domestic garbage littering the streets. In addition, warehouses for trade goods, which held items such as clothing, carpets, and grain for months at a time, were heavily infested with rats. Conditions in the city were considered so unhealthy and filthy, even for the time, that the plague often carried the title "Viennese death" in other parts of Europe.

A religious order operating in Vienna, the Brotherhood of the Holy Trinity, created special hospitals for both children and adults during the 1679 epidemic. The basic nursing care offered in the hospitals was simple, but was generally a vast improvement over other medical and public health measures in the city. Doctors treated patients by using emetics, bloodletting, and by applying noxious ointments. The corpses of plague victims were carted to the outer edges of the city and placed in large open pits for burning. However, the pits were exposed to the open air for several days until they were nearly full, allowing ongoing infection of the rat population.

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