1720 - The Great Plague


Saturdays May 25, 1720, the Large Saint-Anthony arrived at Pomègues, small island of the archipelago of the Friuli, in the roads of Marseilles, at the end of a ten months and three days navigation to the Mediterranean. It brought an invaluable fabric loading partly intended for the next fairs of Beaucaire, which belonged to several notable of the city
of which first alderman J.-B. Estelle, as well as with the captain of the vessel, Jean-baptiste Chataud. However, the plague was announced to Raising when the Large Saint-Anthony had made stopover in Smyrna, in Seide (today Saïda) in Tripoli, on the coast of current Lebanon, then in the island of Cyprus to take goods and travellers there.
The vessel presented clear licences, its cargo had a considerable value (100 000 ecus), it belonged partly to the one of the first magistrates of the city which probably did not remain inactive near the intendants of Health, themselves traders or former aldermen.
The " Large Saint-Anthony " was a flute or three masts square of Dutch manufacture. Arrived to Marseilles on May 25, the vessel wet in Pomègues until June 4; it was then authorized to approach the infirmaries of Arenc to unload there momentary and goods, then isolated in the island from Earthenware jar on June 27. The Regent ordered on 28 July to make burn the ship and its cargo but this command was carried out only September the 25, and 26 1720. Its calcined wreck seems to be found in 1978 by an association of deep-sea diving, I' A.R.H.A.
Because of the lure of gain of certain Marseillais (because brulés the goods would have been owed) the Plague with fact nearly 40 000 victims and the curse to Marseilles lasted nearly four years.
Marseilles in 1750

The Lazaret of Marseilles.
 The lazaret was intended for the stay in quarantine the passengers and goods suspected of being carrying the plague. This new lazaret founded with the district of Arenc (northern of the joliette) in 1663, was increased and supplemented since 1729 and throughout XVIIIe century. It was regarded as model in Europe, it disappears in the medium from XIXe century during installations of the new wearing of Marseilles. One then decided the construction of a hospital on the archipelago of the Friuli, more particularly on the Ratonneau island, close to the creek St Estève. The Caroline hospital was built of 1823 to 1828, it was at the time " the single example of medical architecture. (It was destroyed by the raids combined in August 1944).

It is only in 1894 that a young researcher of the very new Pasteur Institute, Alexandre Yersin (Swiss French of origin) is sent in China where the plague makes devastations.
With a courage inouï it takes, for its experiments, of the bubos on the corpses of pestiférés; by studying them under the microscope it notes the proliferation of microbes in the shape of sticks, thus discovering the bacillus of the plague.
Soon it develops a antipesteux vaccine which saves many human lives.
Yersin also highlights the role of the rats in the transmission of the disease.