During the Chongzhen period, the drought in various places was continuous, the drought caused a large reduction in grain production, the serious decline in the national physique, the extreme deterioration of sanitary conditions, and even the rats were produced by the drought to produce plague bacteria and multiply in large numbers.

The hungry people in the famine gnawed the bark of trees, ate Guanyin soil, and some people began to steal food hidden in the burrows of rats, eating pieces of rats that died on the side of the road, and the plague outbreak that swept across the country finally began.

At the beginning of the fourteenth year of Chongzhen, the plague in the Daimyo Mansion was rampant, and five or six out of ten people died, and they were fierce; The great famine in Quang Binh Province, cannibalism;

The epidemic in Beijing, the epidemic in Tianjin, the epidemic in Henan Province, the death of 19 people in Yangwu County, Kaifeng Prefecture, and countless extinctions, Rongyang, the people died without being separated from each other, and there was no one on the road in March.....

With the outbreak of Li Zicheng's war in Henan, more and more hungry people fled south, many of whom were infected with the plague, and then brought them to Jiangnan.

There are also businessmen who have traveled all year round, which has further aggravated the epidemic, and began to break out in the south of the Yangtze River.

"When Wu Yansheng, an official from Wenzhou, Zhejiang, took up his post, one of the two servants suddenly fell ill and died, and he ordered another servant to go to the coffin shop to buy a coffin, and he didn't come back for a long time, and it turned out that the servant died in the coffin shop......

"An official of Songjiang Prefecture was drinking tea with his colleagues one moment ago, but the next moment he died without getting up......"

"After the wedding, the newlyweds sat in the tent for a long time and did not come out, and the family members watched the tent and were shocked to see that the husband and wife died at the bedside ......"

In the Qianqing Palace, Wu Zhong read "Huangming Times" with a pale face, and his voice became smaller and smaller.

Zhu Cihong was also shocked when he heard it, only the plague can have such a fierce power, it's really terrifying!

He took over the "Huangming Times" and looked at the reports on it that were summarized from various places, and the most frightening of them was the strange death of two thieves.

The report said: A landlord's whole family died, and two thieves planned to make a windfall, and the two agreed to commit a crime, one answered on the eaves, and the other went down to the house to hand over the stolen things.

As a result, the person below suddenly died suddenly while handing the bag, and the person above also contracted the plague and died when he received it, and when he was discovered, the two thieves were still holding the stolen baggage in their hands......

(The above stories are all taken from the records of a Ming Dynasty relict who went by the pseudonym "Flower Village Attendant" and recorded in his memoir "Flower Village Talking".) ）

From these reports, Zhu Cihong felt that the people's attention to the plague was still very low, and it had reached this point that they still dared to gather? Attending a wedding or funeral?

After thinking about it for a long time, Zhu Cihong immediately made a decision, not only limited to the places along the Yangtze River, but also the provinces in the south of the Yangtze River to completely close the city and the road, implement the local A system, and prohibit all gatherings, including weddings and funerals and visiting relatives!

The city of Nanjing is also under martial law, and the Forbidden City of Nanjing is even more stipulated: The courtier's family is sometimes sick, and those who are infected with more than three people, although they are not sick, are not allowed to enter the palace for 100 days!

According to the Ming system, when the plague broke out, the government needed to build a special medical place in the local area, and the imperial court arranged corresponding medical officials to treat the people suffering from the plague.

Moreover, in the Ming Dynasty, medical officers already knew how to wear masks to cover their faces to reduce the chance of being infected by patients, although it is not known whether this thing is useful or not.

There are also wormwood smoked houses, said to drive away evil spirits, in fact, from the current medical point of view, it is to use the special substances produced by wormwood smoking to kill germs, so as to achieve the purpose of prevention.

However, the virus is not a germ, it can be prevented but not eradicated, and for the treatment situation, Wu Youke and a famous doctor in Fujian came up with the "blood pricking method", that is, bloodletting therapy, which is quite effective in treating plague.

The principle of "lancet method" is to promote the surge of lymphocytes in a short period of time through reflex stimulation of human acupuncture points, so as to completely destroy the hidden source of virus release, to put it bluntly, it is to use extreme methods to "activate" the body's immune mechanism.

Most of these severe acute infections need to rely on the body's immune system to heal themselves, even in later generations, the coronavirus is still the same, and the drug only increases the immune system, not antiviral treatment.

In various medical places, there are as many as 10,000 people queuing up to seek treatment every day, and because the plague has a very high mortality rate for some specific populations, the patients who can persist and get treatment are relatively strong.

The crown prince's decree was sent to the provinces south of the Yangtze River through an expedited 800-mile order, and officials everywhere were repeatedly ordered to pay attention to the implementation.

The yamen in various localities did not dare to delay, and were immediately ordered to adopt the method of blocking traffic and conducting strict inspections, and organized heavy defense lines around some prefectures and counties where the plague was most serious to prevent the excessive spread of the epidemic.

First of all, navigation was prohibited along the Yangtze River, and all boats were concentrated at the local state and county wharves, which were managed by the army, and all losses were funded and subsidized by the local yamen.

The intersections around the country are full of banners, with the book: Don't run around when you flee south, obey the arrangement, eat well, resolutely win the epidemic prevention war, and God bless Daming to overcome the difficulties!

Under the strict orders of higher-level officials, notices prohibiting visiting relatives and friends were posted in various parts of the Yangtze River, and the propaganda slogans in some places were quite peculiar, such as "Visit the door this year, go to the grave next year!"

In some places, it is written at the entrance of the village: This road is forbidden, and outsiders entering the village without permission is equivalent to slaughtering my village! Those who enter, people will be crippled!

In other places, the local chief wears a mask and holds a green dragon glaive knife at the entrance of the village, prohibiting any outsiders from entering the village......

In mid-April, the outbreak was brought under control, but it continued to spread to a certain extent because the dead bodies of infected people spread the virus through flies.

For this reason, Zhu Cihong specially convened a court meeting to discuss this issue.

At his behest, Yang Shicong, the governor of Liangguang, who was reporting to Nanjing, proposed at the court meeting that the bodies be cremated to control the spread of the epidemic.

There was no accident, Yang Shicong was resisted and abused by the ministers, at that time, cremation was equivalent to crushing bones and ashes, who wants to burn their relatives to ashes? This is simply a great rebellion!

"The dead are the greatest, and the earth is safe, Yang Shicong, you read the sage book in vain, and you came up with such a thing that violates ethics and morality, it is really a shame for my generation of scholars!"

"Yes, his words can be punished!"

In the face of the reprimands and insults of the ministers, Yang Shicong stubbornly said: "The plague is rampant, and everyone has seen the power here!" The severity has surpassed filial piety, and the law of the Great Dao should be used to return the possessed plague to heaven and earth! ”

The quarrel at the court meeting was hot, and Zhu Cihong immediately terminated it and gave up.

On the second day, Yang Shicong returned to Guangdong by sea, and as soon as he returned to Guangdong, he immediately ordered the collection of thousands of plague-infected corpses and their cremation outside the city.

The Jiangnan literati who heard the news criticized and wrote down, and the people's sentiment was also turbulent, and they accused Yang Shicong of losing his conscience, and asked the prince to kill him, so that the people were angry!

In the transcript of the sky, Zhu Cihong forcibly pressed the matter and delayed it for more than a month, and finally the efforts paid off, the epidemic in the two places was greatly alleviated, the death toll dropped rapidly, and the number of infected people became fewer and fewer.

When Yang Shicong appeared in Nanjing City again, he said: There are no more people infected with plague in the two places, and the world is invited to follow suit!

Li Banghua, the imperial historian of the left capital of the Metropolitan Procuratorate, did not believe in this evil and decided to go to Guangdong to inspect and expose the true face of this fang, but when he arrived in Guangzhou by speedboat, he found that the city had been lifted and the road closure had been lifted, and people were constantly coming and going.

Li Banghua personally inspected several places, and made a private visit to Weifu, and finally came to the conclusion: Yang Shicong did not lie, and the epidemic in Guangdong has really receded!

Li Banghua immediately wrote a letter asking all provinces to follow the law of the two provinces and burn the corpses.

However, he was afraid of offending the world's scholars, so he added a clause at the end: ask the court to give coffins to the cremated people for burial.

This incident shook the entire Jiangnan region, and Zhu Cihong naturally agreed, and ordered the furniture and materials that the patient had touched to be burned together, and the loss was compensated by the local yamen......

After months of publicity, a large amount of money and grain input, and strict monitoring and prevention in various places, the epidemic situation in the provinces south of the Yangtze River has gradually improved, and the plague has been effectively controlled.

After this anti-epidemic war, Zhu Cihong's hoarding of grain and grass in the past few years has almost bottomed out, and the plague is still rampant in the north, so he had to postpone the plan to raise troops on a large scale to the north to sweep away the rogues.