An Epidemic in Lishui in 1524

Date and extent

The gazetteer dates the outbreak to the spring and summer of 1524.

三年甲申，春、夏溧水疫疠大作，死者相枕于道。 — Kangxi Lishui County Gazetteer, 卷之一·邑纪·三年甲申

Translated: In the third year, through spring and summer, a great epidemic broke out in Lishui, and the dead lay in heaps along the roads.

The gazetteer gives no name for the disease, using only the general term yili, epidemic sickness; the phrase about the dead lying in heaps describes the number of deaths and is not a count.

Background

The preceding entry, for 1523, records a great drought, people fleeing north and south, cannibalism, and the sending of the vice minister Xi Shu to relieve the county. The epidemic follows immediately on the drought and the two entries stand next to each other, but the gazetteer states no causal link.

Consequences

The entry for 1524 records the epidemic alone, with no relief, medicine or burial measures. The following year the magistrate Wang Congshan petitioned for remission of the tax on abandoned fields; that entry belongs to the same run of disaster as the epidemic and the drought before it, but the gazetteer does not join them into a single cause.

Uncertainties

First, the nature of the disease, its reach and the number of deaths are not recorded; the phrase about the dead is not used here as data.

Second, no relief or medical measure is recorded. For comparison, the gazetteer notes that after the great flood of 447 an epidemic was met by sending envoys with medicine, whereas the entry for 1524 has no such record; this is a difference between two entries and is not enough to conclude that no relief was given.

Third, the gazetteer does not say whether the epidemic spread beyond Lishui.