Abstract

In the 1830s, plague, which had been all but forgotten by most Europeans, was on everyone’s lips again. Shortly after the Ottoman and Egyptian governments instituted their first permanent quarantines, the disease broke out in the Levant and the Nile delta, and the global medical community watched anxiously to see whether these new western Mediterranean-style quarantines would be able to contain it within the eastern Mediterranean. By tracing two Russian medical expeditions from the Black Sea port of Odessa to the Ottoman empire and Egypt in the 1840s, this article examines the world of European medical practitioners who engaged in vigorous debates about plague and its prevention. Did the disease have a ‘birthplace’ somewhere in the Middle East? Did it spread through contact with its victims, or was it omnipresent in the bad air? Russian, French, British and other medics questioned old assumptions about plague and its contagiousness, while testing out their hypotheses in Ottoman and Egyptian domains. By the 1840s, the Middle East had become a global site for epidemiological research, driving the internationalization of prevention against epidemic. Meanwhile, Ottoman and Egyptian quarantines, and the elusive nature of plague, became entangled with European political ambitions and commercial interests in the Middle East.

中文翻译：

---

1830 年代至 1840 年代奥斯曼帝国和埃及的隔离区以及欧洲关于瘟疫的辩论*

摘要

1830年代，几乎被大多数欧洲人遗忘的瘟疫再次出现在每个人的嘴边。在奥斯曼和埃及政府实施他们的第一次永久隔离后不久，这种疾病在黎凡特和尼罗河三角洲爆发，全球医学界焦急地观察这些新的西地中海式隔离是否能够将其控制在地中海东部。通过追溯 1840 年代从黑海港口敖德萨到奥斯曼帝国和埃及的两次俄罗斯医疗考察，本文考察了欧洲医生的世界，他们就鼠疫及其预防进行了激烈的辩论。这种疾病是否在中东某处有“发源地”？它是通过与受害者的接触传播的，还是在恶劣的空气中无处不在？俄语、法语、英国和其他医生质疑关于瘟疫及其传染性的旧假设，同时在奥斯曼和埃及领域检验他们的假设。到 1840 年代，中东已成为全球流行病研究中心，推动了防疫工作的国际化。与此同时，奥斯曼和埃及的隔离，以及鼠疫难以捉摸的本质，与欧洲在中东的政治野心和商业利益纠缠在一起。