A HISTORY
OF
EPIDEMIC PESTILENCES
FROM THE EARLIEST AGES,
1495 Years before the Birth of our Saviour to 1848:
WITH
RESEARCHES INTO THEIR NATURE, CAUSES,
AND PROPHYLAXIS.

BY

EDWARD BASCOME, M.D.

“The all-surrounding heav’n, the vital air,

Is big with death: and tho’ the putrid south

Be shut, tho’ no convulsive agony

Shake from the deep foundations of the world

Th’ imprison’d plagues, a secret venom oft

Corrupts the air, the water, and the land.”

Art of Preserving Health.

LONDON:
JOHN CHURCHILL, PRINCES STREET, SOHO.
1851.

HUGHES AND CO., PRINTERS,
KING’S HEAD COURT, GOUGH SQUARE.

DEDICATION.

TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE

THE EARL OF SHAFTESBURY,

AND

TO DR. JOHN CONOLLY, M.D.

My Lord,

My Dear Sir,

Inadequate as I feel to the task of conveying to you my sense of obligation in being permitted the honour of dedicating this work to persons of your high position and distinguished merit, I feel doubly so, to express my admiration of your immeasurable benevolence, as portrayed not only in your public capacities in general, but more especially—the one in emanating, the other in carrying out the provisions of the law for the protection and kind consideration of those unfortunates of God’s creatures whom it hath pleased him to afflict with the direst of human maladies, the privation or prostration of the noblest of man’s faculties—Reason.

That your labours have been of incalculable benefit to suffering humanity is too notorious to admit of either comment or eulogy from me.

That you both may live long in health, to see perfected “the good work begun” by you, and that you may enjoy the satisfaction of a well-earned reputation resulting therefrom, is the earnest wish of,

My Lord,

and

My dear Sir,

With the highest respect,

Your obedient,

Humble Servant,

The Author.

PREFACE.

Feeling it to be incumbent on every one to contribute to the good of his fellow-men, in as far as his experience enables him—

“Non sibi sed toti mundo se credere natum;”

and presuming on the practical knowledge gained during a sojourn of a quarter of a century in climes that are not the most hospitable, the Author has been induced to offer to the public the following pages, as his professional lucubrations on a subject deeply interesting to every community,—a subject both comprehensive and obscure,—comprehensive, inasmuch as it involves the consideration of a vast variety of disease under the appellation of Epidemic Pestilence,—“The offspring of inclement skies, and of legions of putrefying locusts,”—and obscure, as regards the uncertainty which must ever appertain to all that relates to the phenomena of Life and Death.

The Author has endeavoured to place in fair review the various opinions of the most eminent historians (professional and otherwise), and would impress on his readers, that on a subject embracing so wide a field as that of atmospheric influence, arising from elemental disturbance, together with the boundless variety in the circumstances of human society, as the exciting and predisposing cause of disease, the present volume must be read and considered as a whole; for it is only by comparison of all the phenomena displayed in the following History of Pestilences, that any thing like just or rational conclusions can be arrived at,—conclusions such as the remarkable coincidences of the observations and comments by historians, not only of the earliest ages of the world, but those of more modern times, fully warrant.

It has been the Author’s aim, by careful examination, to reconcile the discrepancies of historians as regards dates,—discrepancies evidently owing to the varying commencements of the year with different people or nations.

In conclusion,—however dogmatical the Author may appear to be to his readers in that which he has advanced as to the NATURE, CAUSES, &c. of epidemic pestilences, he begs to assure them that he has written from honest conviction; and with that assurance he leaves the subject-matter in the hands of those capable of estimating his efforts in behalf of SANITY.

Ὁ οἴδαμεν λαλοῦμεν, καὶ ὃ ἑωράκαμεν μαρτυροῦμεν.

“We teach that we do know, and testify that we have seen.”

Wyke House, Brentford.

HISTORY

OF

EPIDEMIC PESTILENCES.

CHAPTER I.
FROM 1495 B.C. TO A.D. 540.

Πλείη μὲν γὰρ γαῖα κακῶν, πλείη δὲ θάλασσα·

Νοῦσοι δ’ ἀνθρώποισιν ἐφ’ ἡμέρῃ ἠδ’ ἐπὶ νυκτὶ

Αὐτόματοι φοιτῶσι.

Hesiod.

The earth’s full of maladies, and full the sea,

Which set upon us both by night and day.

It is recorded that in the month Adar,—answering, according to our computation of time, to the period between the middle of February and March, the end of the Jewish year,—during the reign of Pharaoh IV., king of Egypt, in the year of the world 2509 (anno 1495 before the Christian era), and in the 80th year of the life of Moses, the sacred historian and great captain of the hosts of Israel, many awful prodigies in the natural world commenced, especially in commotions of the elements, which were succeeded by a pestilence destructive both to men and beasts in the low lands of Egypt. This terrible pestilence was preceded by fearful commotions of the elements,—hail, thunder and lightning, heat and drought, the generation of insects, &c.; for the summer had been hot, and attended with heavy cold nocturnal dews alternating with rains, after a humid winter. The weather had been very variable; the excessive heats and hot winds exhausted the inhabitants by day, and the cold damp dews chilled them by night: the atmosphere was so filled with fiery elements, and clouds of dust and sand, that men and cattle were in imminent danger of suffocation, and were compelled to seek shelter from these dry storms and tempests. On the 10th, universal darkness prevailed, which continued for three days; and on the 14th, deadly pestilence commenced, which, in one sudden and universal destruction, swept away millions from the face of nature.

Anno 1471 B.C., by dire pestilence, the murmurers and mutineers in the company of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram were destroyed in the encampment at Kadesh, in the desert of Paran, to the number of 14,700 persons; and nineteen years after (1452 B.C.), by a similar pestilence, of the riotous and drunken worshippers of Baal-peor, 24,000 men and women perished.

In the year 1310 B.C., sixty years previous to the Trojan war, the island of Ægina was visited by an epidemic pestilence, which was fatal to great numbers.

Anno 1141 B.C., the people of Ashdod, a place lying on the seashore between Gaza and Joppa, which is called in the New Testament Azotus, were visited by an epidemic pestilence termed Emerods—an affection of the bowels, or malignant dysentery.

In the time of David, 1017 B.C., there broke out a pestilence which in three days destroyed 70,000 persons. About the period of this infliction, the first dreadful epoch of Spanish epidemiology is recorded. The period, however, has been variously given; by some, it is fixed at 1100 B.C., while other writers mention it as having occurred during the great plague or dearth in Egypt. There were, without interruption, twenty-five years of drought in Spain; springs were dried up, rivers became fordable, their waters becoming almost stagnant; there was neither pasture for beasts nor fruit for man; so great was the barrenness of the land, that there was scarcely any green thing to be found, except some olive-trees on the banks of the Ebro and the Guadalquiver. Such, says the historian, was the melancholy state of our ancient Spain; “full of dreadful mortalities, plagues, and miseries of every description, which, with emigration to other lands, nearly depopulated our country.”

Plutarch mentions the occurrence of a great pestilence that happened in Rome in the year 790 B.C., soon after the murder of Tatius: it was so rapidly fatal that it is represented as killing almost instantaneously; cattle as well as men were swept away, and all nature appeared one desolate and abandoned waste: during this awful period it is said to have rained blood, or crimson insects which turned the waters to the colour of blood, as happened in Egypt during the reign of Pharaoh: the crops failed, and the country of Campania may be said to have been ravaged by the sword, famine, and pestilence. Plutarch also gives an account of an epidemic pestilence which afflicted the inhabitants of Italy, especially the capital of the empire, during the reign of Numa Pompilius, of Hezekiah over Judah, and of Sennacherib over Assyria in the year 710 B.C.: by this pestilence 185,000 of the Assyrian armies perished at the siege of Jerusalem, which compelled the assailants to raise the siege and to return to Nineveh, even after they had taken all the principal cities of Judah, including Libnah, a city situated about twelve miles south-west of Jerusalem. It was at this period that Numa Pompilius instituted the Salii, a college of priests of Mars, who carried the sacred shields in procession, to stop the pestilence.

Livy describes another pestilence which occurred at Rome during the reign of Tullus Hostilius, 694 B.C. Zosimus, an officer during the reign of Theodosius the Younger, speaks of the prevalence of a pestilence in the city of Rome during the reign of Tarquin, anno 671 B.C.; and Dionysius Halicarnassus, Murator, and Functius have also mentioned the occurrence of a great famine and pestilence in Rome, anno 545 B.C., which nearly depopulated Velitræ, an ancient town of Latium on the Appian Road, about twenty miles to the east of Rome. A murrain prevailed about this time among their cattle, which destroyed vast numbers, and such havoc was made among the inhabitants of Latium that the Volsci were necessitated to apply to the Romans to re-people their cities. Rome also suffered the year subsequently, as did Campania, celebrated for its lake Avernus, which emitted such poisonous vapours that birds would not go near its banks: this pestilence spared neither age nor constitution, and yielded to no remedies. It appeared suddenly, destroyed its victims rapidly, and on the approach of continued cold weather disappeared as suddenly as it came.

Anno 594 B.C. There perished this year a third part of the inhabitants of Jerusalem by a severe pestilence.

Herodotus and Justin have recorded the destruction of the army of Xerxes, when retreating into Asia after his defeat at the battle of Salamis, by a grievous pestilence, which attacked both land and sea forces, especially the army under the command of General Mardonius, anno 480 B.C.: the victims were numbered at 150,000. During this period Diodorus Siculus writes that the ancient Spanish troops were the most faithful and courageous, and constituted almost always the strength of the Carthaginian armies: he continues,—They (the Carthaginians) took treasure and soldiers, who by their valour aided the republic in their most critical times of war. The Spanish soldiers endured hardship with indomitable courage, and, being naturally of a robust make, were not intimidated by the pestilence which destroyed others of the Carthaginian army of that time, nor by the 150,000 dead bodies—plague-victims, which without burial strewed the plains. All these circumstances did not prevent their appearing in arms, and demanding the capitulation of Syracuse from its first tyrant, whilst at the same time the other troops, shamefully abandoned by their chiefs, took to a precipitate flight, and surrendered at discretion. History says nothing of the means taken for the curing of this horrible pestilence at Syracuse, nor shows clearly why the Spaniards alone enjoyed an immunity from this pestilence, which was worthy of being perpetuated in history. Villalba however mentions some physical causes which he considers contributed to the remarkable exemption of the Spaniards from the dire pestilence: he states that the ancient Spaniards were a sober race; and, according to all authorities, sobriety is a powerful means of protection against disease. Filarcus, a citizen of Athens, was singularly struck with this fact: among the rich who lived frugally, drank water alone, and were clothed with the richest garments, moderation and bodily cleanliness were observed to be of the highest importance in maintaining the sensible and insensible perspiration; these functions of secretion and of excretion being essential in order that the integral parts of the blood should preserve its purity, its weight, its normal state of electricity, and natural fluidity, upon which depend the preservation of health and the power of resisting disease in times of epidemics, as is affirmed by medical jurists, and as the ancient Spaniards practised. He continues,—Bathing is also an efficacious means of removing the impurities that opposed the sensible and insensible perspiration; and it would appear that in Spain, long before the Second Punic War, bathing was in general favour. The unmeaning sneer of Diodorus Siculus at the habit of the Spaniards of washing their entire bodies with urine, will be recollected, whilst Galen says that in Syria they avoid the plague by simply drinking that liquid excrement. That the Spaniards used urine advantageously as a topical lotion we shall find in the treatises on baths and other subjects of ancient Spain. Drs. Ribeiro and Sanchez assert, with some foundation, that the use of linen in Europe has caused pestilence to be less frequent; thus, as it were, contributing to the cleanliness which the ancients obtained by the use of their public baths. To a similar cause we may attribute the rarity with which the Spaniards were attacked by the aforesaid frightful pestilence. Catullus, Silius Italicus, and Gratius Faliscus eulogize the vapour baths of the ancient Sætabi: in fine, says Villalba, the sobriety, personal cleanliness, bathing in common water, washing with urine, vapour baths, and the wearing linen garments, with fortitude, concurred powerfully to the immunity enjoyed from disease by our Spanish ancestors.

Anno 476 B.C. During this and the succeeding years, says Florian de Ocampo, there prevailed in Spain from time to time a series of pestilences and other minor diseases, by which a multitude of persons perished. The Carthaginians, to appease the ire of the gods to whom they attributed these fatal visitations, offered up human sacrifices, and made incisions on their arms and legs, and on other parts of their bodies: they also immolated cattle of all kinds, according to the severity of the pestilence.

Orosius, another Spanish writer, and also Dionysius, relate the occurrence of a terrible plague at Rome, which caused great mortality, 463 B.C. This was a grievous time, says the historian, men and beasts being equally afflicted. The disease was preceded by great heat and drought, and the calamities and fatigues of war, which were greatly augmented by crowds of countrymen and herds of cattle received within the walls of the city, in order to avoid the ravages and plunderings of the Latins and Hernici, who then desolated the country. The epidemic first seized on horses and horned cattle, then on man, the poorer people being the chief victims: it began about the calends of September, and raged until the end of November. The two consuls Servilius and Æbutius, and many other illustrious Romans, fell victims to the disease.

Livy and Dionysius inform us that, anno 452 B.C., nearly one-half of the inhabitants of Rome were destroyed by the pestilence loimikié, which was also communicated to the Æqui, the Volsci, and the Sabines, and caused a great mortality amongst them. The distress and consternation being general, the land was left uncultivated, and the miseries of famine threatened to overwhelm those who survived the epidemic. This pestilence was succeeded by another, which, if possible, was more grievous; it lasted from 443 to 438 B.C. In time, so frequently had Rome been scourged by repeated epidemic pestilences, that Livy styled it “urbs assiduis exhausta funeribus.”

In the second year of the Peloponnesian War, 435 B.C., epidemic pestilence broke out at Athens, where the inhabitants of the Athenian territory were crowded together into the city to avoid the ravages of the Lacedemonians: it destroyed 5000 of the prime of their armies, and an immense number of the poor, and continued without interruption for five years. It began towards the close of an open spring, after a severe winter, raged the four following summers and autumns, was especially fatal to their armies at the siege of Epidaurus and Potidea, and continued all through the severe winters. Thucydides, Lucretius, Anacharsis, Plutarch, and Hippocrates give an account of a similar pestilence which ravaged Persia about the same period. Artaxerxes, the king of Persia, sent for the great physician of Cos and Greece to come and arrest its progress, but Hippocrates nobly answered the Persian monarch in these words, addressing Hystaspes, prefect of the Hellespont: “To the epistle which you have sent, and you have asserted to come from the king, write to the king as I briefly answer,—We enjoy victuals, clothing, homes, and everything necessary for life in abundance; and it is neither right for me to use the wealth of the Persians, nor to liberate barbarians from diseases while they may be the enemies of Greece. Farewell.” Thucydides describes the symptoms of the disease in a cursory manner; Lucretius more minutely; and from these historians we infer the following morbid phenomena. The invasion was sudden and unexpected; the disease commenced with a violent headache, fiery redness of the eyes, succeeded by pains and inflammation of the throat, difficulty of breathing, and offensive breath, a sneezing and hoarseness, violent fever with insatiable thirst supervening: watchfulness and delirium or stupor, vomiting of bilious matter, utter prostration of strength, and urgent flux of the bowels, were noticed in the second stage of the disease. In the first stage, the stools were dark and fœtid: there were hiccough, bleeding at the gums, throat, nose, stomach, and bowels,—convulsions: pustules or sores of a livid hue were also observed about the bodies of those affected. This bilious plague or pestilence of Athens exhibited, from the foregoing accounts, symptoms analogous to those of the bilious remittent or yellow fever of America and the West Indies, and would appear to have arisen from similar causes.

The historian, in speaking of the calamity, brings the causes of the pestilence to our view. He says, “As they had no houses, but dwelt in booths all the summer season, where there was scarcely room to breathe, the pestilence destroyed with the greatest confusion, so that they lay together in heaps, the dying upon the dead, and the dead upon the dying: they were tumbling one over the other in the public streets, or lay expiring round every fountain, whither they had crept to assuage the intolerable thirst which was consuming them. The temples of which they had taken possession were full of the dead bodies of those who had expired there.”

Anno 427 B.C. a cruel pestilence or plague spread almost through the world. Mariana and other Spanish writers say that it commenced in Egypt, and, travelling through all the intervening countries, reached Spain: the mortality in most places began among the cattle. From various accounts it would appear that the country people were first affected with this pestilence; afterwards the inhabitants in the towns. Anno 404 B.C. Carthage was almost depopulated, as recorded by Justin and Diodorus Siculus. The Carthaginians sent on an expedition under Himilco to reduce revolted Sicily to subjection, were destroyed in great numbers by pestilence; it was so fatal that, according to one writer, Ocampo, there did not escape either Mallorcan slingers, Celts, Andalusians, or Africans; many fell dead as soon as they took the disease. The bad policy of leaving their dead bodies unburied on the plains, a prey to dogs, &c., contributed in no small degree to the propagation and virulence of the epidemic. This pestilence was distinguished by the remarkable symptoms of violent dysentery, severe fever, acute pains in all parts of the body, anguish, and great depression of both mind and body. Similar disasters have attended expeditions and long campaigns in warm climates within our own time, as our expeditions into Egypt, Flanders, Brabant, the West Indies, &c. testify.

Annis 393 and 383 B.C. the armies of Gaul and Rome were afflicted with sore pestilence. In the latter year, there were many months of severe drought in Andalusia and along the southern coasts, from the Pyrenees as far as Cape St. Vincent; great famine ensued, with pestilential diseases.

Rome was revisited by pestilence anno 366 B.C.: it raged dreadfully for three years, and swept away the great Camillus with multitudes of his people. When the disease was at its height, it is reported that 10,000 citizens died daily: it prevailed terribly in the months of September, October, and November, and the Sibylline books and Lectisternium were resorted to in vain. To add to their calamities and distress, the earth opened in the midst of Rome, giving rise to the tragical and superstitious decease of Marcus Curtius, by his throwing himself, for the salvation of the city, into the awful chasm on the site of which the lake Alba soon after arose.

Orosius in describing this pestilence says, “This was such a pestilence as generally proceeds from irregular seasons, extreme drought, heat of the spring, moisture in the summer and autumn;” which implies that irregular seasons inducing a pestilential constitution of the atmosphere, according to the doctrines of Hippocrates, who dictated medicine to all the world in those days, were productive of pestilence.

Anno 362 B.C. The war of Sicily being ended by the death of Dionysius the greater, the Republic of Carthage sent a captain named Bostan as the governor of Mallorca, Minorca, Iberia, and Formentera, in order that he should negociate with the Saguntians, and draw them over to their side.

The city of Saguntum, now called Murviedro, was visited by an epidemic pestilence. There was a great scarcity of provisions, and many deaths occurred, even among the nobles. The people became sorrow-stricken and disheartened, as reported by the magistrates to their new governor. It may be inferred that the pestilence raged with severity, from its having affected the higher orders.

Annis 346 B.C. and 405 from the foundation of Rome, extraordinary inundations, with great damage to the cattle, fields, and buildings, occurred. All the cities along the coasts on the Mediterranean Sea suffered also from earthquakes; Saguntum, a principal city, having suffered the most. Annis 332, 296, and 291 B.C. Rome was again visited by pestilence, which was particularly fatal to breeding women and to breeding cattle. A similar visitation affected Rome anno 272 B.C.

Anno 237 B.C. the commotions of the elements in the shape of earthquakes, severe drought, with the want of sufficient food, caused great mortality among cattle and men in Spain, especially at Cadiz.

Anno 218 B.C. the toils of war and the forced marches of the Carthaginian armies on their route to besiege Saguntum, and the unflinching and brave defence by wearying out the assailants, (says Mariana,) caused great pestilence among them. There were also earthquakes and pestilence in several provinces of Spain, also great storms at sea, throwing on the land quantities of fish, some of which were unknown until this occurrence. There was also a fatal epizootic among the dogs and birds.

Anno 216 B.C. In the summer of this year a fatal pestilence began in the vicinity of Carthage. It was supposed that this putrid disease arose from the crowded state of all places, from the multitude of sailors and soldiers there at the time, the country being in a badly cultivated state, the scarcity and bad quality of provisions, and from the stagnant lake, which had always been viewed as a source of disease. For a considerable period it was limited to the place where it originated, but after a time other provinces became affected. Both rich and poor fell victims to this dire disease: some of the principal families suffered; and Hamilca, the wife of Hannibal, and their offspring, were among its numerous victims.

Anno 206 B.C. a vast pestilence, preceded by immense swarms of locusts, occurred in the land near Capua. The same historian, Livy, relates that the Roman and Rhodian fleets, anchored at Phaselis in the Gulf of Pamphylia in the midst of summer, and in an unwholesome situation, suffered from pestilential diseases,—especially the rowers, who were subjected to hard labour, and exposed to the burning rays of the sun. He continues, that violent pestilence ravaged all Italy annis 182 and 181 B.C. This continued for several years; severe drought for six months, and consequent dearth of corn happened, followed by terrible storms, pernicious seasons, and awful commotions of the elements, coldness, dampness, moisture and dryness, noxious vapours, and putrid exhalations. This extraordinary season was followed by a great pestilence among cattle and among the inhabitants of Rome, in the summer and autumn of the year 177 B.C. This pestilence continued for four years, from 177 to 173, during which period swarms of locusts deluged Apulia, as the Pontine provinces were covered the previous year. So destructive were their ravages, that Sicinius the prætor was commissioned with an army to drive them away!

“Pestilentia quæ priore anno ingruerat in boves, eo verteret in hominum morbos; qui inciderant haud facile septimum diem superabant: qui superaverant longinquo, maximæ quartanæ implacabantur, morbo. Servitia maxime moriebantur, eorum strages per omnes vias insepultorum erat. Ne liberorum quidem funeribus subficiebat. Cadavera intacta a canibus ac vulturibus tabes absumebat; satisque constabat, nec illo, nec priore anno in tanta strage boûm hominumque vulturiûm usquam visum.” The translation of this pithy passage conveys that the pestilence which first attacked cattle, fastened upon men,—those who survived the seventh day did so with great difficulty, and were subsequently afflicted by disease (or fever) of a quartan form. The poor and lower classes were those who suffered most, their dead carcases lying about the highways,—dogs and vultures left the carcases untouched which were consumed by corruption,—neither in this nor in a former year was there a vulture seen. From this graphic detail we may infer that the beasts of the field were first attacked, then mankind; that the disease underwent a sort of crisis on the seventh day, terminating either in death or chronic distemper, as we see to be the case in our own days; viz. consumption, dropsy, diseases of the liver and spleen, and ague;—that it was most fatal among the lower orders, who are generally more distressed in times of scarcity, and from other causes more susceptible of disease, such as cold, damp abodes, and poor diet;—that carnivorous animals were sick themselves, refusing to touch the carrion carcases; in fact, the infected provinces were entirely deserted by vultures;—lastly, that the malady was similar to our yellow, bilious, remittent fever, in all its symptoms, as we see it occurring amongst us in various places—the West Indies, America, &c.

Orosius gives us an account of another pestilence, which devastated Rome, anno 144 B.C.

In the year 140 before the Christian era, the war of Viriathus having been concluded, the proconsul Q. Pompeius Rufus commenced blockading Numantia (now Algeria). The plan of his operations being to charge the air with mephitic vapours, he determined on turning the course of the river Douro, and inundating the country round about by means of its waters, which would have the effect not only of spoiling the atmosphere by its moist exhalations, but of inducing famine also, by the destruction of all vegetation. These attempts were, however, fruitless, inasmuch as the Numantians, being a robust and warlike people, resisted the consequences of the proconsul’s attempts against them. Having foreseen his intentions, they had supplied themselves with abundant provisions, which they had intercepted from the Roman legions; while, on the other hand, the Roman soldiers themselves fell victims to their own measures, pestilence having broken out among them—a malignant dysentery, equal in severity and fatality to that which formerly had laid waste the army of Lucullus.

After this period to about that of 134 B.C., Scipio Æmilianus, called the Numantine, organized his army, and having established admirable rules of hygiene and semeiotics, whereby he preserved his former strength and health, began to devastate the plains of Numantia, of Vacca, and Palestine. The want of water which was experienced in the latter place (Palestine) forced them to make wells to obtain drinkable water, but unfortunately the water thus obtained proved to be of a character productive of a malignant epizootic, which destroyed their horses and other beasts of burthen: the pestilence among their cattle increasing, obliged them to change their quarters to the plains of Numantia in order to winter there.

Anno 130 B.C. The famous Numantines, so much dreaded by the Romans on account of their valorous resistance, were not less feared by the Greeks, than the horrible pestilence which prevailed in Numantia. The Greek, Appianus Alexandrinus, speaks of them with admiration and dread. The Numantine people, who had hitherto resisted the corrupted condition of the air, ultimately suffered such exhaustion for want of food, their stores having been consumed, that after having subsisted on dressed skins of animals for several days, they fell into the frightful necessity of becoming anthropophagi, so that from feeding on the bodies of those who fell defending their country, pestilence arose, which hastened the downfall of their city.

Anno 126 B.C. Epidemic pestilence prevailed with great mortality in Africa. Orosius, Justin, and Livy, who have described it, attribute this pestilence to the stench arising from the putrid carcases of dead locusts, which were brought over by a strong east wind in such multitudes that they devoured every green thing, even to the bark of trees; they were subsequently driven by a south wind into the Mediterranean, and being again washed on shore in the warm season of the year, putrefied, and produced this awful pestilence, which destroyed 800,000 in Numidia alone. On the sea-coast of Carthage 200,000 perished. Of such terrible visitations by insects, which to this day exist in the East at particular seasons, carrying destruction in their course, Lord Carnarvon gives a description in his ‘History of Portugal and Gallicia.’ It will convey a pretty good idea of their destructiveness and of the distressing consequences. Speaking of natural exhibitions, of which he was an eye-witness in Africa, he writes thus: “A fall of locusts is beyond description the most awful imaginable—a most dreadful scourge, which is considered in eastern and northern countries the most unfailing manifestation of the wrath of God. Travelling along the western coast of Africa, I once beheld this terrible infliction. These creatures fell in thousands and tens of thousands around us and upon us along the sands on which we were riding, and on the sea that was beating at our feet; yet we were removed from their most oppressive influence; for, a few hundred yards to our right, darkening the air, the great innumerable host came on, slowly and steadily advancing in a direct line and in a mighty moving column. The fall of locusts from this central column was so great, that when a cow directly under the line of flight, attempting ineffectually to graze in the field, approached her mouth to the grass, there rose immediately so dense a swarm, that her head was for the moment almost concealed from sight, and as she moved along, bewildered by this worse than Egyptian plague, clouds of locusts rose up from under her feet, visible even at a distance, as clouds of dust when set in motion by the wind on a stormy day. At the extremity of the field I saw the husbandmen bending over their staffs, and gazing with hopeless eyes upon that host of death which swept like a destroying angel over the land, and consigned to ruin all the prospects of the year; for wherever that column winged its flight, beneath its withering influence the golden glories of the harvest perished, and the leafy honours of the forest disappeared. There stood those ruined men silent and motionless, overwhelmed with the magnitude of their calamity, yet conscious of their utter inability to control it, while further on, where some woodland lay in the immediate line of the advancing column, heath set on fire, and trees kindling into a blaze, testified the general horror of a visitation which the ill-fated inhabitants endeavoured to avert by such a frightful remedy. They believed that the smoke arising from the burning forest, ascending into the air, would impede the direct march of the column, throw it into confusion, and drive the locusts out to sea, and thus deliver the country from their desolating presence.”

During the civil wars which were excited by Sylla and Marius, the Roman armies lost 10,000 men by plague in the year 89 B.C.

Anno 60 B.C. Spain, according to the opinion of several ancient and modern writers, both foreign and national, was one of the countries most subjected to the frightful disease of leprosy. Sauvages has asserted that there were no lepers in France, save those that came from Spain and America. Senertus states that in Spain and Africa elephantiasis (leprosy) is more frequent than in any other part of the world. Dr. Casal coincides in this opinion, as may be seen in his ‘Natural and Medical History of the Principality of the Asturias;’ and, finally, the Academic Memoirs of Seville speak of its existence in those countries, as owing to their communication with the Arabs and Jews, without denying, however, that the prevalence of the disease may have been influenced by the peculiar constitution of Spain. Accordingly its dry and burning temperature has contributed considerably, as it would appear, to locate this terrible disease, especially in the kingdom of Andalusia, and in the principality of the Asturias. The use of pork and other salted provisions, so commonly employed as articles of diet in ancient Spain, is supposed to have acted powerfully in perpetuating the disease, inasmuch as the opinions of Ubilis and other physicians go to show that these sorts of aliment are powerful generators of the malady. The first appearance of leprosy in Spain coincides with its introduction into Italy, after having been prevalent in the army of Pompey the Great about sixty years, more or less, before the coming of Christ. The sons of the celebrated general proceeded with the army of their father from Italy to Spain, to stem the invasion of Cæsar, and this was in all probability the cause of its first introduction into that country,—at least, it is so considered by some writers.

Anno 49 B.C. The continued heavy rains and tempestuous seasons, the like of which had never been seen by the oldest inhabitants, caused frightful inundations of the rivers Cinca and Segre. Epidemic pestilence, peculiar to an atmosphere surcharged with moisture and poisonous exhalations, appeared immediately after. The shepherds were obliged to withdraw their flocks in order to save them from the waters, which, together with the increased price of corn and of other food amongst the neighbouring populace, multiplied the misfortunes of the army of Julius Cæsar, who had not only to combat against the bravery of the Pompeians, but also against the trials of famine and pestilence. Their distress would have been greater and more lamentable, had not some of the neighbouring tribes, who had recently become their allies, succoured them with the necessaries of life, which were sent in under the escort of 500 Ilecaones, a tribe who occupied the banks of the Ebro.

In the time of Mark Antony, anno 30 B.C., a pestilence of so general a character prevailed, that it seems to have spread over the whole world. Dion Cassius mentions this pestilence, which continued for five years, destroying vast numbers of the inhabitants of Jerusalem: it was also very destructive at Rome and in Palestine. The celebrated triumvir died about this period of the pestilence, as mentioned by Nuestro Alonso of Freylas in his ‘History of Pestilences.’

The next account of epidemic pestilence we have, is given by Tacitus, who relates that in the East, in Asia Minor, fourteen years after the commencement of the Christian era, pestilence prevailed; a severe earthquake about this time was experienced; a comet is also mentioned as having been seen, whose tail, it is said, with one fell swoop hurled down a dozen cities at once. Another pestilence is recorded by Suetonius as having raged with great mortality at Babylon: it caused a multitude of Jews to remove to Seleucia. This year was marked by great famine, in fulfilment of the prophecy of Agabus (Acts xi. 28). During the reign of Claudius Cæsar, at this period, pestilence was rife in Greece and Italy.

Pliny and Tacitus both give an account of those periods of mortality from the year of our Lord 40 to 53 and 54, when most of the officers of Rome died of pestilential disease: “ex omnium magistratuum genere plerique mortem obierunt.” It was during the year 40 that the great eruption of Etna occurred, which frightened Caligula from Sicily. Dire famine was also experienced, which, with pestilence, extended from Italy almost to India. Babylon was almost depopulated about this period.—A.D. 88, pestilence carried off 30,000 of the people of Rome. Tacitus gives an affecting account of the ravages of this plague. The houses were filled with dead bodies, and the streets with funerals; neither age, sex, nor condition were exempted from it; slaves and plebeians were suddenly carried off by it amidst the lamentations of their wives and their children, who were also seized with the disease while administering to the sick and mourning over the lifeless bodies of the dead. Pliny, Orosius, and other writers describe this pestilential period as exceedingly fatal. Earthquakes, eruptions of volcanoes emitting sulphureous vapours, inundations, tempestuous seasons, and other awful commotions of nature, characterized this period all over the inhabited globe. In June, a comet appeared; on the 1st of November following, a tremendous ebullition of burning lava issued from the crater of Vesuvius, deluging the country, and Herculaneum and Pompeii sunk in a moment: these cities, with their inhabitants, were buried in one universal mass. Thunder and lightning pierced the heavens, and the ashes and smoke from the burning gulf discharged into the air were wafted to Rome, Syria, and Africa, the inhabitants whereof trembled lest the world should be destroyed or turned into chaos; the fish in the neighbouring seas were killed. These calamities were preceded by a long drought in Italy during the summer; and in the autumn of A.D. 80 a terrible pestilence broke out in Rome, and destroyed for some time 10,000 citizens daily. Eight years after, A.D. 88, an epidemic pestilence appeared in the north of England, and continued for some time; in 92, it carried off 150,000 persons in Scotland.

Philo, the Jewish philosopher, gives a description of a ‘loimic’ pestilence which occurred during that century, and appositely conveys the mode of diffusion and the circumstances of the confluent small-pox. He says, “The clouds of dust suddenly falling on men and cattle produced over the whole skin a severe and intractable ulceration; the body immediately became tumid with efflorescences (ἐξανθήσεσιν) or purulent phlyctenæ, which appeared like blisters excited by a secret fire beneath. Men necessarily undergoing much pain and universal soreness from ulceration and inflammation (φλογώσεως) suffered not less in body than in mind by the severe affliction, for a continuous ulcer was observable from head to foot.” These observations of Philo are intended as a comment on Exodus, ch. ix. v. 9: it shall be “a boil breaking forth with blains.” He finishes by observing, that it should rank among pestilential diseases (ἐν τοῖς λοιμώδεσι νόσοις), or as the infliction of a tainted atmosphere (πληγὴ ἀπ’ ἀέρος καὶ οὐρανοῦ). From a passage in Dion Cassius’ Roman History, it would appear that some mode of inoculation had been attempted in the reign of Domitian, A.D. 92, and revived in that of Commodus.

A.D. 110, a severe earthquake was felt in Shropshire, in England. Four years after, 114, a similar shock, but more extensive, was experienced in China, which caused the destruction of much property and of many lives. During the same period a pestilence prevailed in Wales, which carried off 45,000 of its inhabitants, after a hot summer and an inclement autumn. In fact, in those days there frequently happened great inundations, especially of the river Severn: at one time immense numbers were drowned in their beds, when 5000 head of cattle were destroyed. A.D. 115, a tremendous earthquake laid waste the city of Antioch. Five years after, A.D. 120, Nicomedia and several neighbouring cities were swallowed up; and, A.D. 128, Cæsarea and Necropolis met with a similar fate from a severe earthquake.

A.D. 133, a great drought existed in England, and the Thames was almost dried up. This condition of the seasons was followed by pestilence; and thirteen years after, Scotland was visited with an epidemic, to the great destruction of its inhabitants.

Arabia was ravaged by pestilence in the year of our Lord 158. The disease appeared in Rome during the reign of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus and Lucius Verus, preceded by a more destructive plague in Asia, which the great Ammianus Marcellinus, the philosophic hero, asserted arose from the foul air of a small box which a Roman soldier had opened at the capture of Seleucia. This opinion was in accordance with the superstition of the times. At that period the elements were greatly deranged: commotions of the physical world, inundations of rivers, agitations of the earth, devastations from locusts, caterpillars, and every variety of the insect tribe, famine, putrid vapours, with great inclemencies and irregularities of the seasons, foretold the approach of the awful pestilence which in the same year desolated Rome: its symptoms were, a burning fever and gangrene of the extremities, particularly of the feet. These times were also distinguished by wars and rumours of wars: 450,000 Romans were butchered in Syria and in Cyprus by the Jews. Fourteen cities were destroyed by earthquakes, amongst which was Antioch, with 100,000 inhabitants: 580,000 were supposed altogether to have perished by the sword, famine, and pestilence.

Aurelius Victor, speaking of the emperor M. Antoninus, gives a lucid description of those calamitous times. He says, “Unless he had been born for these times, all the affairs of the Roman empire would have been ruined assuredly as if by one fall; for there was rest no where from arms, and wars burned through all the East, Illyricum, Italy, and Gaul. The motions of the earth, with annihilation of cities, inundation of the rivers, thick pestilences, species of locusts infested the fields; indeed, nothing can be said or conceived, by which mortals used to be wasted with the severest agonies, which have not raged during his administration.”

A.D. 173, there was a severe winter, and consequently a famine in England; a pestilence broke out the summer following, and continued to the autumn and subsequent winter. In this year, as also in 175 and 178, Rome was visited by epidemic pestilence, which committed great ravages among the soldiery. Five years after, it was again afflicted with disease; and in A.D. 195, plague prevailed in all Italy. “A great pestilence,” says the historian, “raged in all Italy, and became most violent in Rome by reason of the great concourse of people assembled from all quarters of the world. The emperor, by the advice of his physicians, retired to Laurentum, a cool place beautifully shaded with laurels, on the supposition that the sweet smell of those plants counteracted contagion. The people of the city were also advised by the physicians to fill their noses and ears with sweet-smelling ointments, and to use perfumes, in order to prevent the action of human effluvia and of the contagious air. These precautions, however, as might have been expected, proved of little avail: the distemper proceeded unchecked, and men and cattle continued to perish therefrom in multitudes. Five thousand died daily in Rome for a considerable time, and famine with pestilence persisted for three years.” (See Herodian, Dion Cassius, &c.)

A.D. 203, there was an eruption of Mount Vesuvius.

In the year 211, a plague, preceded by an earthquake and a great inundation of the river Trent, appeared in the British Isles. A.D. 218, the river Tweed overflowed; and dire pestilence followed four years after, destroying 100,000 lives in Scotland.

Mortal pestilence affected the whole world A.D. 250. Italy, Ethiopia, Egypt, Asia, France, Spain, and various other parts suffered great ravages from disease. “For twelve years subsequently,” says Zosimus, “a pestilential fever followed the Scythians, and devoured the scanty remains of the human race.” “Pestilence has contaminated the face of the earth,” says Jornandes, a learned historian.

A.D. 252, Alexandria and other districts suffered from epidemic pestilence, which continued its ravages with great fury for twelve or fifteen years. This pestilence was not, however, one uniform disorder, but was comprised of several different kinds, such as dysentery, ignis sacer, or scurvy, typhomania, remittent fevers, &c. According to Cedrenus, there were at the time singular exhalations and dews, which resembled the ichors of dead bodies: “hence,” he says, “constant loimoi, with other severe and unmanageable disorders (βαρέα καὶ ἀνίατα νοσήματα), which destroyed multitudes of the people.”

A.D. 262. During the reign of Gallienus 5000 citizens of Rome perished daily. Cyprian, a bishop of Carthage, a man of erudition (see reprint, Fell, fol. Oxon. Amst. 1700), in detailing the symptoms of this horrific pestilence, thus writes: “The symptoms were, a dejection of spirits, exhaustion of strength, incessant involuntary evacuations, violent fever of the bowels, with destruction of the sight, hearing, and feeling.” Aurelius Victor asserts of this pestilence, that it spread rapidly all over Rome, and arose from heavy cares and depression of mind, as well as from a pestiferous state of the atmosphere. We may here recognize all the terrible symptoms of that devastating disease Cholera, which, beginning in the year 1817, ravaged the four quarters of the globe, and continued for a series of years. Several earthquakes were experienced this year in Europe, Asia, and Africa, with three days’ darkness. A.D. 272, there was another eruption of Vesuvius.

A.D. 292, pestilence and famine prevailed in England and Wales; it also raged with great intensity in those places, A.D. 310, carrying off, in the latter, 40,000 persons.

A.D. 302, epidemic pestilence (loimos), preceded by famine, broke out in Syria. The account of this pestilential disorder by George Cedrenus appears to be similar to that by Eusebius; he says: “At this time almost every evil that can be enumerated fell upon men—famine, loimos, and drought, with misfortune of a certain disorder; it was an ulcer, the denomination of which was answerable to its affinity with the fiery anthrax, spreading over the whole body: it proved highly dangerous in all respects to the persons affected, but by a particular determination to the eyes in most cases, it produced blindness in thousands of men, women, and children.” Nicephorus says of this disease—“It originated in famine, and was called anthrax; it was an ulceration attracting or draining out humours, with an intolerable stench, which, in spreading over the bodies, extended to and affected with violence the eyelids (κανθοὶ), and occasioned blindness both in males and females.” We are further informed by Eusebius and Cedrenus that the army of Gallienus, in Armenia, was affected with pestilence, which extended to every city in the eastern provinces, and even to villages and lone houses. The great mortality among the poor was attributable more to famine than to the disease; they were obliged to eat hay, grass, roots, &c. The rich, however, were not exempt from this pestilence, but were also carried off in great numbers. The emperor Diocletian, according to Cedrenus, died of the malady: “he was affected with severe pains over the whole body,—a violent phlogosis preyed upon his inward parts, and his flesh melted like wax. In the progress of the complaint, he became totally blind; his throat and tongue putrefied, so that worms came from his mouth, and he emitted an odour not less offensive than that of dead bodies in the sepulchres.” This malady was evidently confluent small-pox.

A.D. 325, epidemic pestilence, preceded by famine, prevailed all over Britain, and in many other parts of the world. During the years 336, 355, 358, 362, 367, 368, and 375, deadly disease, with famine and earthquakes, were again experienced in the British Isles. In Wales alone, in the latter year, 43,000 persons died from pestilence. A terrible earthquake was felt in Macedonia, and 150 cities were swallowed up in Asia and Greece. Ammianus Marcellinus mentions a plague which broke out in Amida, a city of Persia, during its siege by Sapor, which was attributed to the distresses of war, and to the corruption of unburied bodies lying about in the streets, plains, &c.

A.D. 361, there was a terrible famine in Italy. Four years after, 365, severe shocks of an earthquake, with inundations round the Mediterranean, did much damage. 50,000 persons were drowned at Alexandria in the month of July. Italy and Syria suffered from plague, which continued until 394. An inundation of the Nile nearly destroyed the cities of Alexandria and Libya; and rain, storms, and drought were experienced in Judea, which was also visited by immense swarms of locusts. These phenomena were succeeded by dire pestilence. There were several earthquakes at intervals between the months of September and November, which destroyed many places in Europe. During the years 400, 407, 417, and 419, pestilence desolated Asia, Africa, and Europe; a severe earthquake shook Cibyra, and destroyed many villages in its neighbourhood: in 419, an earthquake swallowed up several cities in Palestine. A.D. 442, pestilence swept away great numbers in England this year. A.D. 446, on the 17th of September, at Constantinople, a severe earthquake, attended with fire, pestilence, and famine, caused great misery. The walls of the town with seventeen towers were thrown down. A.D. 458, an earthquake destroyed nearly all Antioch on the 14th of September. Pestilence, about the same period, again broke out in England, and in various other regions, as related by Echard. The Greek ecclesiastical historian Nicephorus, and other writers, state that it prevailed more remarkably in Cappadocia, Galatia, and Phrygia. Isodorus tells us that so great were the famine and disease in Spain, in A.D. 443, that men fed with fury upon each other.

From the year 450 until 467, pestilence raged in Rome; it revisited the city A.D. 473. The year previously, 472, on the 11th of November, at noon, there occurred an eruption of Vesuvius, which ejected flames that were seen at Constantinople, obscured the sun at noon day, and ravaged all Campania: there were ashes four inches deep on the tops of houses many miles distant. A.D. 480, a severe earthquake was experienced at Constantinople, which lasted forty days, causing much destruction of life and property. Epidemic pestilence infested Scotland; and Asia and Africa were nearly depopulated by epidemic disease.

A.D. 502, Scotland was visited by epidemic disease, which destroyed both men and beasts. A.D. 512, there was an eruption of Vesuvius. A.D. 517, Palestine suffered from pestilence, as did the inhabitants of Wales ten years after, in 527. The year previous, 526, Antioch with several other cities was nearly destroyed by an earthquake; it also suffered from a similar visitation two years after, 528, when 4800 of its inhabitants were buried in its ruins.

A.D. 540, so dire a famine was experienced in Italy, that parents were reduced to the cruel necessity of eating their children. About the same period, during the reign of Justinian, a destructive pestilence ravaged the greater part of Europe and Asia for more than half a century. It was at first observed to be plague in its usual form only, attended with tumours in the groin or axillæ, or behind the ears; but in its progress it was found to consist of various disorders, corresponding, in their leading features, according to the description by Evagrius, to “the true pestilence.” These disorders consisted of pestilential or scarlet sore throat, and dysentery, with small-pox and measles. This fatal epidemic is shown to have continued in Asia until the year 590. Some authors have computed the number destroyed during this pestilential period at two millions.

CHAPTER II.
FROM A.D. 543 TO 1330.

A.D. 543, there was a terrible famine, during which, Procopius says, 50,000 labourers died of hunger in the narrow region of Picenum, and a still greater number in the southern provinces. In one place, seventeen travellers were lodged; they were murdered and eaten: two women who were detected in the commission of this atrocious crime were slain. Earthquakes were experienced all over the world. In 544, dysentery, which continued until 548, similating in severity the true plague, committed great ravages in France.

A.D. 552, a severe earthquake was experienced at Constantinople, doing much damage. Nine years after, 561, a similar shock was felt at Rome, and also at Constantinople. The year following there was so great a frost that the Danube was frozen over.

France, Germany, Italy, and various other countries of Europe,—in fact, the whole inhabited globe,—suffered awfully from pestilence in the years of our Lord 565–66, 583, 587, 589–90–91, 596 to 610: in the course of 580, Antioch was again shaken by a severe earthquake. There prevailed during this period, in the year 589, in Spain, writes St. Gregory, bishop of Tours, a very singular pestilence, the principal symptoms of which were pimples, or pustules, with buboes in the groins: such great havoc did it make, that the houses were as so many tombs, and the town as one vast cemetery: it was supposed that this disease was brought from Marseilles in a vessel, as it had raged there the year previously. St. Gregory, in his ‘History of the Franks,’ also gives these particulars of this pestilential period: “In the fifth year of the reign of king Childebert (A.D. 580), great floods, tempests, earthquakes, hail, and several prodigies, were succeeded by a dreadful plague; for almost every district of France was occupied by a dysentery, in which the patients were affected with violent vomitings, fever, headache, and excruciating pains in the loins: what they discharged from their mouths was green or yellowish.” This epidemic was particularly fatal to infants and children: “Parvulos adolescentes arripuit letoque subegit: perdidimus dulces et charos nobis infantulos,” &c. King Childebert recovered with difficulty, but he lost his two sons. Austrigilda, queen of Orleans, sunk under the disease; she retained to the last the ferocious and vindictive spirit of the times, having exacted a promise from the king Gunthran that her two physicians should be put to death if they did not save her; soon after she expired, both of them were stabbed by the king’s order. The Count d’Angoulême also died of the pestilence; the corpse appeared black and charred, as if it had been laid over coals of fire.

Paulus Diaconus describes the Ligurian pestilence which raged during this period, A.D. 566, in the time of Narses: “Cœperunt nasci inguinibus hominum vel in aliis delicatioribus locis glandulæ in modum nucis seu dactyli, quas mox sequebatur febrium intolerabilis æstus, ita in triduo homo extingueretur: sin vero aliquis triduum transegisset, habebat spem vivendi. Erat autem ubique luctus, ubique lacrymæ,” &c. He concludes with the following passages: “Nulla vox in rure, nullus pastorum sibilus, nullæ insidiæ bestiarum in pecudibus, nulla damna in dominos volucribus. Sata transgressa metendi tempus, intacta expectabant messorem: vinea amissis foliis, radiantibus uvis, illæsa manebat. Nulla erant vestigia commeantium; nullus cernebatur percussor, et tamen visum oculorum superabant cadavera mortuorum. Pastoralia loca versa fuerunt in sepulturam hominum, et habitacula humana facta fuerunt confugia bestiarum.”

Procopius, a Greek historian of Cæsarea, secretary to Belisarius, a general during the reign of Justinian, records some important facts of this pestilence, which ravaged the whole world; it lasted four months at Constantinople, and, when at its height, it is supposed that 10,000 perished daily in that city. Nicephorus also describes this pestilential period, and remarks that “certain little marks appeared on the doors and outside of their houses, on their garments, and on their utensils; some white crusts of a peculiar deposition from the air adhered to all things, as damp moulds do on the walls or dwellings, and dew on grass.”

In the year 590, at Rome, in the time of Pope Pelagius the Second, there was a horribly destructive pestilence prevalent, and also in Spain. The air was observed to be impregnated with a kind of mist and fœtidness, which by irritation induced a sneezing; hence the custom of saluting a person sneezing with the expression “Dominus tecum,” or some similar expression, a practice which has reached our time. The year following, 591, Britain suffered from a severe pestilence, also Turenne, and the provinces of Arragon and Vivares. This disease was called inguinaria, because buboes were formed more particularly in the groin. In the year 610, pestilential small-pox committed great ravages at Mecca.

A.D. 614, epidemic elephantiasis prevailed in Italy, and three years subsequently, an epidemic pestilence, resembling the true plague.

In Syria, Arabia, &c., a great pestilence prevailed A.D. 639 and 640.

A.D. 654, Constantinople was devastated by a severe pestilence.

In the year of our Lord 664, a sudden pestilence (man-cyalm), after depopulating the southern coasts of Britain, infected the provinces of the Northumbrians, and, spreading for a long time in every direction, destroyed great numbers. The year following, 665, it reached Italy, causing great destruction of life. Fordum (Scriptores, xv. vol. iii. page 646) cites a Greek historian to the effect that dire mortality prevailed, A.D. 669, all over Europe, which did not spare the remotest islands, Great Britain and Ireland. England also suffered greatly, A.D. 672, from pestilence, at which period universal disease appeared in Syria and Mesopotamia. England and Ireland were revisited by pestilence, A.D. 679, beginning in the month of July, and continuing until the end of September. Rome suffered from similar ravages the following year, and in A.D. 683, England again suffered from severe epidemic disease, which lasted three years. A.D. 685, Syria and Libya were laid waste by disease. Ireland suffered from a severe epidemic the same year.

From a singular portion of history which has been preserved in the records of the church of Mayo, we find that the ‘ignis sacer,’ or pestilence originating from famine, was similar to and contemporary with the pestilence ‘man-cyalm,’ which raged among the British after the departure of the Romans from Britain (664).

According to the records, two kings of Erin summoned the principal clergy and laity to a council at Temora, in consequence of a general dearth, the land not being sufficient to support the increasing population. The chiefs (majores populi) decreed that a fast should be observed both by clergy and laity, so that they might with one accord solicit God in prayer to remove by some species of pestilence the burthensome multitudes of the inferior people, and thus enable the residue to subsist more commodiously. “Omnes majores petebant ut nimia multitudo vulgi per infirmitatem aliquam tolleretur, quia numerositas populi erat occasio famis.” St. Gerald and his associates suggested that it would be more conformable to the Divine Nature, and not more difficult, to multiply the fruits of the earth, than to destroy its inhabitants. An amendment was accordingly moved, “to supplicate the Almighty not to reduce the number of the men till it answered the quantity of corn usually produced, but to increase the produce of the land, so that it might satisfy the wants of the people.” However, the nobles and clergy, headed by St. Fechin, bore down the opposition, and called for a pestilence on the lower orders of the people. According to the records, God’s judgment immediately fell upon the wicked authors of the petition. The two kings who had summoned the convention with St. Fechin, the kings of Ulster and Munster, and a third of the nobles concerned, were cut off by the pestilence—‘Budhe connail,’ which was by some called ‘pestis flava,’ by others ‘infirmitas icteritia.’

A.D. 685, there happened an eruption of Vesuvius.

In the year of our Lord 690, rains deluged Italy: six years after, 696, pestilence prevailed in Constantinople, and during the years 703 and 713, Scotland also suffered from epidemic pestilence. Small-pox caused great mortality in Spain, A.D. 714.

A.D. 717, 30,000 persons were carried off at Constantinople by pestilence: it again appeared in the years 724 and 729. In the year 732 great numbers perished from pestilential disease at Norwich in England, and also in Syria.

A.D. 740, the world was again visited by dismal pestilence, which continued, with varied intensity, for 260 years, until the year 1000. During this period, 749, an earthquake destroyed many cities in Syria. Among the many writers on the subject, Baronius, P. Diaconus, Cedrenus, and Magdenburgh, make mention of an epidemic pestilence which raged in Calabria, in Naples, also in Constantinople; in which latter place the mortality was so great, that the living were unable to bury their dead, cart-loads being huddled together into a vast common excavation of the earth, while great numbers were left unburied. Short mentions the prevalence of a fatal pestilence in Wales, A.D. 762, which afterwards extended all over England, continuing until 771. In Chichester alone it is stated that 34,000 persons perished. Pestilence raged in France A.D. 779, and invaded Scotland 784. Lancisius and Bartianus in their Annals relate the occurrence of disease in various parts of the world, which destroyed immense numbers of cattle, especially in Germany, where the mortality was great among the horned tribe. A.D. 801, St. Paul’s at Rome was thrown down in the month of April; and in France, Germany, and in various parts of Italy also, a severe earthquake was experienced. So intensely cold was it in A.D. 806, that the Rhone was frozen over: the cold was from 18 to 20 degrees centigrade below zero. Lancisius and Bartianus also give an account of a pestilence that arose from excessive rains and cold damp weather, A.D. 817 and 820, and prevailed through all the dominions of Gaul. The crops failed from excess of moisture, and famine ensued. The following winter was very severe: the Rhine and the Danube continued one solid body of ice for thirty days, and epidemic pestilence ensued in the spring, which persisted all the summer and autumn. The succeeding winter, in 822, was very severe: the snow lay on the ground twenty-nine weeks, and caused great destruction to both men and beasts. A long drought followed in the summer, and pestilence was the consequence: it was attended with such fatality, that, A.D. 825, it killed almost all the inhabitants in France and Germany.

In the year 853, epidemic pestilence broke out in Scotland: two years after, earthquakes and violent tempests were experienced; and in A.D. 856 there occurred an earthquake and a tremendous inundation of the Tiber, which were succeeded by severe epidemic sore throats, anginas, &c., as recorded by Baronius, Murator, Short, and Magdenburgh. A.D. 859, the Mediterranean was so frozen over, that carriages were driven on the Adriatic Sea. In 863, epidemic pestilence ravaged Scotland; and in the year 874, myriads of grasshoppers or locusts, of an immense size, with six feet and two teeth as hard as flint, overspread Gaul. They devoured every green thing, and were afterwards driven into the British Channel by a strong east wind; their dead bodies were washed on shore, where they putrefied, and therefore were supposed to have caused the epidemic pestilence, which destroyed a third part of the maritime inhabitants of Gaul. In 883, famine and pestilence afflicted Italy, and the year following, pestilential disease raged at Oxford, which also affected the cattle, destroying great numbers. Soon after this period, when Alfred the Great had just finished the rebuilding of London, which had been burnt and destroyed by the Danes, a plague occurred which raged throughout the land for three years, carrying off many great men and ministers of state, as well as others. About the same time, A.D. 896, a mortal famine and pestilence, from intemperate seasons, happened in Gaul, Germany, Italy, and various other places in Europe. The frost, twelve years afterwards, A.D. 908, was so severe, that most of the rivers in England were frozen over. A.D. 912, a great part of London was again destroyed by fire. A.D. 922, a pestilential fever was prevalent, and very fatal in Scotland.

A.D. 929, the winter was severe. The Thames was frozen over for thirteen weeks: a dreadful famine and disease followed; and in 937, pestilence arising from great heat and long drought again raged for some time in England.

A.D. 940, epidemic pestilence of severe character appeared in the north of Europe amongst the cattle, being fatal to numbers. This murrain amongst the cattle was followed by disease in man, from which in Scotland alone 40,000 persons perished. In the year 964, the emperor Otho’s army was almost entirely destroyed by pestilence. A malignant fever or plague prevailed in London in 965, and a grievous famine happened, in 976, in London, and also in Italy. In the year 981, great mortality prevailed amongst the Lacedemonians; and six years after, 987, England suffered from malignant fevers, which destroyed many of its inhabitants, whilst a sort of flux caused great mortality among the cattle. A.D. 993, there was an eruption of Vesuvius. In 997, burning fevers and agues were fatal in England; and in the year 1005, pestilence, in the shape of the true plague, began and continued for three years in various parts of the globe, more than half the human race perishing therefrom. Thousands died from famine in Italy. A.D. 1007, another eruption of Vesuvius.

Notwithstanding the great length of the pestilential period (260 years) just noticed, in A.D. 1009, the earth became deluged with rains and pestilence, which began among the Saxons. In the years 1012, 1019, 1020, 1021, and 1024, dreadful pestilential seasons followed. A.D. 1017, it rained the colour of blood in Aquitaine for the space of three days.

In the year 1025, the summer was wet and cold, and pestilence raged in England and in other parts of Europe.

A.D. 1027, an extraordinary convulsive disease—which was called ‘the dance of St. John or St. Vitus,’ on account of the Bacchantic leaps by which it was characterized, and which gave to those affected, whilst performing their wild dance and screaming and foaming with fury, all the appearance of persons possessed,—first showed itself in some persons near the convent church of Kolbig, not far from Bernburg. According to an oft-repeated tradition, eighteen peasants, some of whose names are still preserved, are said to have disturbed divine service on Christmas eve, by dancing and brawling in the churchyard; whereupon the priest Ruprecht inflicted a curse upon them, that they should dance and scream for a whole year without ceasing. This curse is said to have been completely fulfilled, so that the unfortunate sufferers at length sunk knee-deep into the earth, and remained the whole time without nourishment, until they were finally released by the intercession of two pious bishops. It is said, that upon this they fell into a deep sleep, which lasted three days, and that four of them died, the rest continuing to suffer all their lives from a trembling of their limbs. This tradition, divested of the embellishments of crafty priesthood, will show the disease to have been what we now call Chorea or St. Vitus’ dance.

A.D. 1029 and 1031, epidemic pestilence again pervaded Europe, especially England and Gaul, after tempestuous seasons, devastations of locusts, meteors, eruptions of volcanoes, comets, intolerable vicissitudes of the weather, and famine had caused great havoc.

A.D. 1033, a pestilence infested England; and two years afterwards, 1035, in the month of June, so intense was the cold that all the corn and fruits were destroyed. There was another eruption of Vesuvius the year following. A.D. 1042, it snowed heavily during harvest-time; it rained excessively throughout the year in many parts of Europe; the sea overwhelmed Flanders, and a terrible commotion of the elements was the precursor of famine and pestilence in England, Gaul, Germany, &c.; cattle and men were equally destroyed. The following year, 1043, there was another eruption of Vesuvius, and also one in A.D. 1048. A.D. 1063 the river Thames was frozen over for fourteen weeks. Pestilential diseases, such as fluxes, pleurisies, fevers, &c., carried off many hundred thousands of Saracens marching to invade Rome in the year 1064: this pestilential epidemic continued until 1066. A.D. 1067, leprosy being on the increase in Spain, lazar-houses for the lepers were first established at Valencia by Ruy Diaz de Villar, which were called ‘Cid Cunpandor.’ About this period an awful plague swept away a great part of the inhabitants of Egypt and Arabia. The following year, 1068, a great pestilence raged in York and Durham (in England), and a terrible plague devastated Constantinople. A.D. 1075, so intense was the cold this year that the Thames was frozen over from the month of November until April the following year, 1076; with the exception of a very few days, there was scarcely any thaw during all this period. A.D. 1077, London was nearly destroyed by fire. About this period, and two years after, famine, pestilence, and locusts made great havoc in Italy, Russia, Flanders, and in England.

In the years 1087–88 and 1089, very rainy, cold summers and extreme winters were experienced in England, Gaul, and Germany, when pestilence and famine did much mischief in those countries. There were also famine and epidemic disease in Italy. In the latter year, 1089, erysipelas prevailed epidemically in France, causing great mortality. A.D. 1090, a terrible earthquake was felt throughout England, which was followed by a great scarcity of fruit and a late, unproductive harvest. The year following, a severe storm was felt in several parts of England; the wind was at south-west, especially at Winchelscomb, Gloucestershire, where the steeple of the church was thrown down; there was much thunder and lightning; the crucifix with the image of the Virgin was broken in pieces. On the 5th of October, during the storm a thick mist for several hours darkened the sky. A few days after, on the 17th, a thunder-storm from the south-west destroyed upwards of 500 houses in London: it unroofed Bow church; and at Old Sarum the steeple was struck down, with many dwelling-houses.

A.D. 1093, a tremendous inundation occurred in Syria, by which prodigious numbers of the inhabitants and cattle, such as oxen and horses, were destroyed. A.D. 1096–97, 1100, 1103–4, and 1105, pestilence and famine happened from unhealthy seasons; there occurred excessive rains, terrible inundations, severe winters, inclement summers, variable autumns, multitudes of worms (papiliones), and violent hurricanes in England, Palestine, and Holland, in which latter place 100,000 persons were drowned by the inroads of the sea. It was during this period, A.D. 1100, that the lands of Godwin, earl of Kent, to this day called the ‘Goodwin Sands,’ were inundated. 1104, a comet was seen. The disease which prevailed in England was an erysipelatous epidemic fever, in which the limbs of the sick were discovered to be thickly beset with black and livid spots, like carbuncles in the plague. Two years after, fevers, fluxes, &c., were rife, and pestilence continued to prevail in various parts of Europe in the years 1108–9, 1110–11. There appeared a comet in the years 1107 and 1110. A.D. 1113, the water of the Medway failed so greatly, that the smallest boats could not float in its channel. The Thames about the same period was so low between the Tower and London Bridge that women and children waded over. Owing to so great an ebb of the ocean, the sands were laid bare for a whole day for several miles from the shore: pestilence ravaged Judea. A.D. 1116, severe earthquakes were experienced in the month of December in various parts of England, especially in Shropshire. Two years previously, 1114, several bridges, being built of wood, were broken down in England by the ice, when it thawed after the severe frost.

From the year 1120, a pestilential period equal in intensity and destructiveness to that between the years 740 and 1000 (a period of 260 years), preceded by famine, murrain, &c., commenced, and continued to ravage various parts of the globe until 1392 (272 years), a brief notice of which, taken from the chronicles, will show its extent and fatality.

From A.D. 1120 unto 1125, erysipelas raged epidemically with great mortality in England, and it has been computed that, by it, a third of the population perished in those years. A.D. 1126–27 and 1128 a destructive pestilence again prevailed in England. A.D. 1130, a severe earthquake was felt in Shropshire in the month of September. A.D. 1133, the Po was frozen over from Cremona to the sea, and the year after, 1134, an earthquake occurred, just as King Henry was about to embark for Normandy, when flames of fire burst out of certain rifts of the earth with great violence. On the 2nd of August there was an eruption of Vesuvius, A.D. 1136, and the year following, a severe earthquake swallowed up the city of Catania, with more than 15,000 of the inhabitants. Dismal pestilence occurred again in England, lasting twelve years, from 1133 unto 1146; famine also added to the miseries of the inhabitants, and much cattle were destroyed by murrain, and for want of provender.

From the year 1150 to 1169 severe winters and dry summers were experienced; there were frequent inundations and earthquakes; and famine and pestilence swept the world, especially Scotland, Ireland, Italy, Gaul, Sicily, Judea, Asia, and Africa. A.D. 1164, there was a great inundation in Friesland, which covered nearly the whole country, and destroyed vast numbers of the inhabitants. A.D. 1167, Henry II.’s palace in Dublin, at which he spent his Christmas, was built of wattles, with a straw roof, and the sides formed of clay. A.D. 1172, great mortality from dysentery was experienced in England; and two years after, small-pox, measles, epidemic catarrh, scarlet fever, quinsies, and pleurisies were greatly prevalent: similar maladies were rife in various other parts of the world from 1175 to 1193. A.D. 1179, about Christmas, at a place called Oxen-hall, near Darlington, in the bishopric of Durham, the earth raised itself up like a lofty tower, and thus remained for several hours, when on a sudden it sunk down again with a horrid noise, and formed a deep pit, which continues until this day: it is supposed that the wells that are now called Hell-kettles were formed by this convulsion of nature. A.D. 1183 and following years, a severe pestilence scourged England, and the plague raged at Rome. A.D. 1185, an earthquake overthrew the church at Lincoln; at the same time other places in the neighbourhood suffered from the shock. Castile, and principally the city of Leon, suffered from a most cruel plague which spared neither sex nor grade, visiting palaces as well as the hovels of the poor. Many of the bishops were carried off.

A.D. 1190. The old chronicler Geoffrey de Vinsauf describes a terrible famine and pestilence that happened in 1190, “in the army of the Crusaders at the siege of Acre, owing to the villany of the Marquis of Montferrat, the governor of Tyre, who not only refused to supply the soldiers with food, but would not either allow of the townsfolk to send them provisions.” So great was the famine and the scarcity, that “a moderate measure of wheat which a man could carry under his arm was sold for 100 aurei, a chicken for twelve sols, and an egg for six deniers. The men were reduced to feed on their horses, which they were compelled to kill, not even the entrails being rejected. Men of high rank and the sons of great men fed upon grass even; and herbs such as they once despised and believed not fit for human use, the greatness of the famine made now most sweet to the starving. The public ovens were constantly occupied by men fighting for the bread, and noblemen, suffering from the pangs of hunger, became thieves and stole the loaves from the bakers’ shops.” To add to their misery, heavy rains fell, and pestilence broke out amongst them, so that a thousand deaths happened daily. De Vinsauf says, “The unusual showers, by their constant and continuous fall, had such an injurious effect upon the soldiers, that, with the excess of the affliction, their limbs becoming swollen, the whole body was affected as with the dropsy, and from the violence of the disease the teeth of some of them were loosened and fell out.” But few of those attacked recovered. Every section of this old work, descriptive of this pestilence, ends with a fierce imprecation on the Marquis for his desertion and perfidy.

A.D. 1193 and 1194, there was a famine in Italy, and pestilence swept England, continuing till 1196. “The common people perished in every quarter for lack of food, and the fiercest pestilence followed, in the form of acute fever, which destroyed such numbers that scarcely any were left to minister unto the sick; the customary funeral service ceased, and in many places large ditches were made, into which the dead were thrown.”—(Chron. W. Humford, vol. ii. p. 546–7.) There was, A.D. 1196, a great famine and plague in the principality of Catalonia, and 1199, pestilential fever raged at Cordova, in which the celebrated physician Averrhoes observed that every patient who was bled before purging invariably died.

England again suffered severely from epidemic pestilence in the year 1200, and also in the following year. A.D. 1205, a severe frost was experienced in England from the 14th of January unto the 22nd of March.

A.D. 1206, on the last day of the month of February, there was an eclipse of the sun, which lasted six hours—the darkness was as great as at midnight. This phenomenon was followed by abundant and continued rains, inundations, and severe epidemic pestilence in Spain.

The years 1210–1213, 1217, 1218, and 1220, were marked by ordinary seasons, except in Spain, Italy, and Friesland. In the former place, Spain, 1217, the drought was so great as not only to destroy the harvests, but the pasture had the appearance of having been burnt up; famine was the consequence, with disease both in men and cattle. In Italy the plague, it is said, scarcely left a tenth part of the inhabitants alive, and in Damietta it is asserted that only three persons out of 70,000 survived. In Friesland, A.D. 1218, there was an inundation which destroyed cattle, houses, and many persons. In 1221, excessive rains, floods, frosts, and inclement heats induced a famine and pestilence, which almost desolated the whole of Europe; in some countries, the living were exhausted burying the dead, and in some cities scarcely a person survived the terrible destruction.

A.D. 1222, there was a severe thunder-storm in England with lightning, which destroyed several churches; the summer was excessively dry; frost and deep snow in April had destroyed the blossoms of the fruits; the country was deluged with rains in autumn, and swept with tempestuous winds; and the plague raged with uncontrollable fury in Germany, Hungary, Gaul, Egypt, and other countries: the animals also suffered from disease. The winter of 1225 was rigorous, following the great drought. In 1224 a dearth ensued, and there was a great mortality among sheep.

A.D. 1228, abundant rains, followed by a hot summer, the subsequent winter being a severe one, induced fatal disease, and an inundation at Friesland destroyed 100,000 persons.

The inundation of the Tiber, which happened A.D. 1230, drowned all the lower city of Rome, the river rising even to the stairs of St. Peter’s church: July and August following were exceedingly hot; famine ensued, and afterwards pestilence commenced and continued until A.D. 1235. England suffered also from pestilence, which decimated the population; in that year 20,000 persons, it is supposed, died of starvation alone in London. About this period, leprosy became so common in England that it was made the subject of several legislative enactments.

During this year, 1230, when King Don Jayme seized on the island of Mallorca, a frightful and lethal pestilence prevailed not only among the poor and wretched, but also among the higher orders; in the course of only one month, several nobles and individuals of the first families of Aragon and Catalonia died. The desolation which this dire pestilence caused was such that it almost depopulated the island, and forced the king to send galleys to Catalonia in search of colonists, he having given an order to Don Pedro Cornel for 100,000 reals to bring from Aragon 150 gentry,—caballeros or nobles. This pestilence increased with another no less fatal disease, viz., ‘the Sacred Persian or St. Anthony’s fire;’ so that this great monarch, anxious for the safety of his people, established in the island, by his mandate of 13th September of the same year, the hospital of St. Anthony for the reception and treatment of all suffering from so terrible a malady, as appears in the history of the kingdom of Mallorca written by the chronicler or historian Don Vincente Mut. In imitation of this establishment, and of that founded in Castro Xerez in 1214, other hospitals were erected for the same purposes in Madrid, Saragossa, and in various other provinces of the kingdom. Twenty-three years after, another hospital, called after St. Lazarus, was established in the city of Seville, similar to that which was built in the city of Valencia in the year 1067. The Annals of Seville, written by Zurita and Don Alonso Melgado, state that this hospital was founded by King Alonso the Wise. About this time, 1230, Denmark, Italy, and Gaul were visited by a severe epidemic pestilence, as also were various other parts of Europe; it continued until 1236.

A.D. 1233 it thundered and lightened for thirteen days, with heavy rains, which destroyed all vegetation in England, when famine and disease were the consequences. At this time most of the houses in London were built of wood and wattles, and thatched with straw; the windows were without glass, and there were neither chimneys nor boarded floors; common straw was used for the king’s bed. The Mediterranean was frozen over; loaded waggons also crossed the Adriatic in front of Venice. A.D. 1234 and the year following, 1235, the Thames rose so high at Westminster, that the lawyers and other members of the court were brought out of the Hall in boats. A.D. 1237, the dancing disease, similar to that which was rife A.D. 1027 at Kolbig, broke out amongst upwards of 100 children at Erfurt; they were said to have been suddenly seized with this singular malady, and to have proceeded dancing and jumping along the road to Armstadt; when they arrived at that place they fell exhausted to the ground, and, according to the account of an old chronicle, many of them died, after they were taken home by their parents, and the rest remained afflicted to the end of their lives with a permanent tremor. The years 1238 and 1239 were also destructive years in Europe.

A.D. 1240, the fish died on the coast of England; inclement seasons prevailed, and pestilence appeared in various parts of that country. Two years after, A.D. 1242, excessive rains swelled the river Thames, and inundated the country round about Lambeth on the Surrey side. The year following was remarkable for the appearance of meteors and drought; deadly pestilence prevailed in various parts of England. A.D. 1247, pestilence again occurred in England; it broke out in the month of September. A.D. 1249, an earthquake threw down St. Michael’s on the Hill without Glastonbury; a severe shock was felt also about the same period in Somersetshire.

In the same year, 1249, a dreadful pestilence ravaged the armies of St. Louis the Crusader, caused, says Joinville, his historian, by the decomposition of the dead bodies of those who had been slain in two great battles fought a few days previously. They had been thrown into the river by the Saracens, and when they floated, were arrested by the low bridge, which was the means of communication between the two divisions of the French troops. The river was covered with them from bank to bank, so that the water could not be seen a good stone’s-throw from the bridge upwards. The pious king caused the bodies of the Christians to be removed from the river and buried in deep graves; those of the Saracens were thrust under the arch of the bridge, and floated down to the sea. This occurred during Lent, and all that time, being obliged by their creed to live on fish, the soldiers could get no other than eelpouts,—a gluttonous fish, which fed on the dead bodies. The disease which broke out among them, Joinville says, dried up the flesh on their legs to the bone, and the skin became tanned as black as the ground, or like an old boot that has long lain behind a coffer (evidently a kind of dry gangrene). In addition to this miserable disorder, those affected by it had another sore complaint in the mouth, from eating such fish, that rotted the gums, and caused a most stinking breath: very few escaped death that were thus attacked; and the surest symptom of its being fatal was a bleeding at the nose; when that took place, none recovered. Starvation was soon added to their miseries, for the enemy was enabled so to blockade them, that the provision-boats could not reach them. The disorder so increased in the army, that the barbers were forced to cut away very large pieces of flesh from the gums to enable their patients to eat. The mortality was very great indeed, but what number thus perished miserably is not mentioned by Joinville.

In the year 1250 the summer was rainy and tempestuous, and a hard winter followed. The old town of Winchelsea was swallowed up by the sea, and an earthquake was felt at St. Albans, that did much damage. The summer of 1251 was intolerably hot; there was a famine in Italy, and epidemic pestilence traversed all England, and was attended with great mortality; a thunder-storm occurred, during which the chimney of the chamber where the queen and her children lay at Windsor was struck down, and the whole apartment violently shaken; large oaks in the park were torn up by the roots: the lightning was so terrible as to surpass any that had occurred in the memory of man. A.D. 1252, the late frost in spring, succeeding drought, destroyed the vegetation; there were heavy rains in July; at Michaelmas the plague began to rage in London, and pervaded all England, continuing until August in the following year, thus affording an instance of this disease beginning in autumn, running through the winter, and terminating in the summer. The winter of 1254 was severely cold; a murrain appeared among sheep, and a mortal disease among horses called ‘the evil of the tongue.’

A.D. 1255–56 and 1258, the tides rose uncommonly high; a comet was observed in 1256; the rivers swelled with excessive rains, tempests levelled buildings, the summers were wet, the crops failed by the destroying power of the elements, and dearth, famine, and pestilence caused great havoc amongst the inhabitants of England; 15,000 persons perished in London alone from hunger. “The inundations in autumn,” says M’Culloch, “destroyed the crops; fatal fevers prevailed, principal in the summer, during the dog-days, when to one cemetery alone, that of St. Edward’s, 2000 bodies were carried.” Long droughts succeeded, and the mortality continued until 1257. A.D. 1264, a murrain destroyed much cattle in England, especially horses; and in A.D. 1266, swarms of the palmer-worms destroyed all vegetation in Scotland. In 1269, excessive seasons existed; pestilence destroyed the Crusaders on their march to the Holy Land, and the French king and his son perished by it. A.D. 1274, a grievous rot broke out amongst the sheep, which persisted for twenty-five or twenty-eight years, destroying almost all the sheep in England. From the year 1277 to that of 1340 similar seasons, inundations, famines, and pestilence reigned at different times and in different places, among the inhabitants of Britain, Italy, Poland, Denmark, Prussia, Zealand, Egypt, Germany, Bohemia, Spain, &c.

A.D. 1278. In the month of June, this year, the dancing mania again occurred on the Mosel Bridge at Utrecht, when 200 fanatics began to dance, and would not desist until a priest passed who was carrying the host to a person who was sick, upon which, as if in punishment of their crime, the bridge gave way, and they were all drowned.

A.D. 1283, King Philip of France invaded Spain with an army consisting of 200,000 infantry and 8600 cavalry; when at Gerona, this army suffered from pestilence, 4000 being carried off by it. Innumerable swarms of flies, said to be as big as acorns, were generated, and attacked both men and horses, numbers of whom were killed by their poison. This pestilential season was attributed to a miracle wrought by St. Narcissus.

According to the veterinary surgeons Martin Arrendondo and Fernando Calvo, in the introduction to the Commentaries of the celebrated Francisco de la Reyna, mention is made of an epizootic of great severity, which occurred in one of the cities of the kingdom of Seville, A.D. 1301, by which there died more than 1000 horses. The above-mentioned authors derive their information from a paragraph of Laurenciscus Rasius, in his work entitled ‘Hippiatria or Marescalia,’ in which, when speaking of the diseases of horses, he thus writes: “Dicta autem infirmitas (febris) epidemialis est, et ex ipsa anno CCCI. fuerunt in urbe mortui plusquam mille.”

A.D. 1285, a severe thunder-storm was experienced in various parts of England: as the king and queen were holding converse in their bed-room, a flash of lightning passed by them, doing them no injury; but it struck and killed two of their attendants who were in an ante-room. It was about this period that water was conveyed to London by means of leaden pipes after fifty years’ labour. Severe dysentery prevailed in various parts of the kingdom, as also an epidemic, simulating the influenza of the present day, complicated with typhoid symptoms, which persisted for upwards of ten years. A.D. 1299, a comet was seen. The seasons for three years were inhospitable; severe catarrhs with fluxes pervaded England.

A.D. 1302, great drought prevailed in Spain similar to those which had occurred for centuries past; famine ensued, when pestilence raged with great violence, carrying off thousands in various parts of the country.

A.D. 1307–8, 1309, and 1310, intemperate seasons were experienced, and famine was the consequence, more especially in England, Ireland, and Scotland, with great mortality in the latter country. It was about this period that coals were first brought into use in England. Various parts of London, as shown by Stow, were in a filthy condition, which, with the mode of living, and the disgusting habits of the inhabitants, gave ample cause for the outbreak of pestilence. Fleet ditch was “of such breadth and depth,” so says Stow, “that ten or twelve ships’ navies at once, with merchandise, were wont to come to the bridge Fleete; for some time this canal had been neglected, and became an intolerable nuisance in a variety of ways.” It was not until 1733 that it was arched over, when the Fleet Market was built on it. Pope denounces the filthy condition of Fleet ditch in the following lines of his ‘Dunciad:’

“By Bridewell all descend

(As morning prayer and flagellation end)

To where Fleet ditch, with disembouging streams,

Rolls the large tribute of dead dogs to Thames,

The king of dykes! than whom no sluice of mud

With deeper sable blots the silver flood:

‘Here trip, my children! here at once leap in,

Here prove who best can dash through thick and thin;

And who the most in love of dirt excel—

Or dark dexterity of groping well;

Who flings most filth, and wide pollutes around

The stream, be his the weekly journals’ bound;

A pig of lead to him who dives the best;

A peck of coals a-piece shall glad the rest.’”

A.D. 1316, a peculiar disease prevailed in England,—fever, with severe dysentery, which raged with an intensity and mortality equal to the true plague: scarcity amounting to famine was experienced at the same time, wheat selling at 45s. per quarter, equal in those days to £30 sterling of our money. A.D. 1327, a comet was seen; the year following, an earthquake, the greatest ever felt in England, occurred on the 14th of November.

A.D. 1330, the weather was so tempestuous in England, and the rains fell so heavily, that the harvest did not begin until Michaelmas. A storm from the westward overthrew several houses and did much damage, tearing up forest trees of immense size by the roots. Five years after, 1335, there was a grievous famine in England, which was succeeded by pestilence, and attended with great mortality.

CHAPTER III.
FROM A.D. 1333 TO 1418.

Proceeding in the annals of antecedent ages, we have now to record a series of mighty revolutions in the organism of the earth, accompanied by general and awful commotions of the elements.

“Earthquakes, Nature’s agonizing pangs,

Oft shake th’ astonish’d isles;—the Solfaterre

Or sends forth thick, blue, suffocating streams,

Or shoots to temporary flame. A din

Wild through the mountains’ quivering rocky caves,

Like the dread crash of tumbling planets, roars.

When tremble thus the pillars of the globe,

Like the tall cocoa by the fierce north blown,

Can the poor brittle tenements of man

Withstand the dread convulsion? Their dear homes

(Which, shaking, tottering, crashing, bursting, fall)

The boldest fly; and on the open plain

Appall’d, in agony the moment wait

When, with disrupture vast, the waving earth

Shall ‘whelm them in her sea-disgorging womb.

Nor less affrighted are the bestial kind:

The bold steed quivers in each panting vein,

And staggers bathed in deluges of sweat;

The lowing herds forsake their grassy food,

And send forth frighted, woeful, hollow sounds;

The dog, thy trusty sentinel of night,

Deserts his post assign’d, and piteous howls.

Wide ocean feels

The mountain waves, passing their custom’d bounds,

Make direful, loud incursions on the land,

All-overwhelming: sudden they retreat,

With their whole troubled waters; but anon

Sudden return, with louder, mightier force.

The black rocks whiten, the vex’d shores resound;

And yet more rapid, distant they retire.

Vast coruscations lighten all the sky

With volumed flames; while thunder’s voice

From forth his shrine, by night and horror girt,

Astounds the guilty, and appals the good.”

The great events to which we allude began, in the year 1333, first in China. Here parching drought, succeeded by famine, laid waste the tract of country watered by the rivers Kiang and Hoai. Rain, about this period, fell in torrents in and about Kingsai, destroying, it is said, by the floods more than 400,000 persons. The mountain Tsincheou, in falling, formed vast chasms in the earth. About this time, according to the diary of Ramon Vila, there were experienced dire famine and pestilence at Barcelona, which in a very short time carried off 10,000 persons.

In the succeeding year, 1334, inundations occurred in the neighbourhood of Canton. Soon after, at Tche, after an unexampled drought, pestilence arose and carried off 500,000 human beings. Hecker graphically describes the unprecedented and universal commotions of this period. An earthquake happened near Kingsai, and subsequent to the falling-in of the mountains of Ki-ming-Chan, a lake was formed, of more than a hundred leagues in circumference, where thousands found their grave. In Houkouang and Ho-nan a drought prevailed for five months, and innumerable swarms of locusts destroyed the vegetation; famine and pestilence, as is usually the case, following in their train. It is remarkable, that, simultaneously with a drought and renewed floods in China, in 1336, many uncommon atmospheric phenomena and, in the winter-time, frequent thunderstorms were observed in the north of France; and, so early as the eventful year 1333, an eruption of Etna took place. According to the Chinese annals, 4,000,000 persons perished by famine in the neighbourhood of Kiang in 1337; and deluges of rain, swarms of locusts, and an earthquake which lasted six days, caused an incredible devastation.

During this year, 776 of the Ejira, or 1334 of the Christian era, Mohamed Ben Abdalla Ben Alkhatrib, a native of the city of Granada, being a physician and a member of an illustrious family versed in all species of cosmography, acquired considerable authority and importance amongst many of the Moorish kings of Granada; but, towards the termination of his valuable life, fortune became adverse; for having been accused of treason during the reign of Ebn Alahmoz, he was thrown into prison, and shortly afterwards died, leaving, amongst other works on medicine and the veterinary art, one on the mode of avoiding plague, which is cited by Casiri in his ‘Biblioteca Arábigo Hispana Escurialense,’ tom. ii. pp. 71 and 72.

A.D. 1338, Kingsai was visited by an earthquake of ten days’ duration; at the same time France suffered from failure in the harvest. From this period until 1342 there was in China a succession of inundations, earthquakes, and famines. It seemed as though everywhere on the tops of mountains springs were made to burst forth, and dry tracts were deluged in an inexplicable manner. Great floods also occurred in the vicinity of the Rhine, in France, &c. In the year following, 1343, the mountain Hong-tchang, in China, fell in; and in Pien-tcheou and Leang-tcheou, three months after, rain followed, and unheard-of inundations, which destroyed seven cities:

“Towers, temples, palaces

Flung from their deep foundations; roof on roof

Crush’d horrible, and pile on pile o’erturn’d,

Fall total!”

In Egypt and in Syria violent earthquakes took place, and in China they became from this time more and more frequent; for they recurred, in 1344, in Ven-tcheou, where the sea overflowed. A dreadful earthquake was experienced at Lisbon, where vast numbers of the inhabitants perished by the falling of the buildings. A.D. 1345, in Ki-tcheou, and also in both the following years in Canton, great commotions were experienced, especially subterraneous thunder. Meanwhile floods and famine devastated various districts until 1347, when the fury of the elements subsided in China.

Whilst pestilence was thus raging, China, Syria, Greece, Egypt, Asia, and Africa suffered from it, A.D. 1346; and the year following, 1347, a pestilence similar to that which subsequently committed such ravages in the south of Gaul, Spain, and England (1348), raged in Italy and Sicily.

1345. Guido de Gaullaco informs us that in Spain, in the month of March, there broke out a pestilence, which he affirms spread all over the world, leaving scarcely a fourth part of the human race alive. Andres Laguna, Martinez de Leyva, Duarte Nunhez, and other medical writers, speak with horror and astonishment of this terrific plague, which, they say, lasted five years.

Abu Giaphar Ahmed Ebn Ali Ebn Khatemar, a native of the city of Almeria, and one of the Arabian physicians, who, according to Casiri, was instructed in the history of the great pestilences, which nearly the entire world suffered from in the years of the Egira 748, 749, and 750, or of the Christian epoch 1347–48 and 1349, quotes the following passage: “The pestilence first broke out in Africa, whence it extended through all parts of Egypt and Asia, and finally attacked Italy, France, and Spain; but in the city of Almeria, where it raged with great malignity, it lasted nearly eleven months, namely, from the beginning of the month Rabiu, the first month of the year of the Egira 749, and of the Christian epoch 1348, until the commencement of the following year.” The work which contains the description of this pestilence consists of ten chapters, and is entitled ‘Morbi in posterum vitandi Descriptio et Remedia.’ Don Miguel Casiri makes mention of it in his Codex of the year 1780.

Abu Abdalla Mohamed Ben Alkhatrib, a native of Granada and brother of the other Alkhatrib, also wrote a work on the causes and cure of the pestilence that affected the city of Granada in the year of the Egira 749, and of our Lord 1348, entitled ‘Quæsita de morbo horribili perutilia;’ and Casiri alludes to this work also in his Codex.

Villanius, the historian of Florence, gives an account of a pestilence which commenced in A.D. 1346 in Upper Asia: it first appeared in Cathay; it arose from a most filthy smelling vapour, supposed to have proceeded from a certain fiery body, which either fell down from the atmosphere, or was eructated from the earth. This vapour, like a fire, consumed all that stood in its way,—animals, horses, trees, &c., for the space of fifteen days’ journey all around; and some most filthy little beasts furnished with feet and tails, as also worms and a small kind of snake in numberless multitudes, fell at the same time from the atmosphere upon the earth; the stench and putrefaction from these infected the very air and all the circumjacent regions. A pestilence having arisen from them, spread around, depopulating the whole of Asia, and subsequently Egypt, Greece, and Italy; thence it spread into France, Spain, and England, and at length into Germany. In the city of Florence alone, says Villanius, there perished 60,000 persons, but St. Anthony computes the number to have been 100,000. There prevailed about this period, or at the commencement of the year 1347, epidemic pestilence, in the shape of pleurisies, quinsies, and spotted fevers, which at last terminated in the real Oriental plague, with buboes and carbuncles: it was reported that 50,000 were carried off in London in one week, and the deaths at Norwich were almost equally numerous. About this period, 100,000 persons perished from pestilence at Venice: Lubeck lost 90,000, while the deaths from similar disease were computed at 200,000 in the kingdom of Spain. This pestilence persisted in many parts during the following year.

In the beginning of 1348 pestilence universally prevailed over Europe and in other quarters of the globe; it commenced in Syria, spread along the shores of the Pontic Sea, and of Greece and Illyria, passed into Italy and Sicily, and thence to the island of Mallorca: according to Zurita, it almost depopulated that island in less than a month, more than 5000 persons having been carried off by it. In the same year, continues Zurita, a general pestilence extended from the East to the ultimate boundaries of the West, comprising in its ravages the kingdom of Valencia and the principalities of Catalonia. In the month of June it broke out in the city of Valencia, and its virulence was such, especially in the maritime parts, that, as before noticed, scarcely any part of Europe escaped,—persons died suddenly; from Italy it passed into Sicily, Sardinia, and so on to Mallorca. So great was the mortality at Barcelona, that in the month of June, during the usual annual solemn procession, which caused a number of priests, &c., from Scio to be present, thousands died, and amongst them four magistrates and almost all the Council of Ciento. During this period, says another author, the signs of terrestrial commotions were exhibited in Europe.

During the reign of Edward III. it rained in England from Midsummer unto Christmas, when a pestilential period commenced. A disease termed ‘Sorte Diod,’—the black pestilence, or death,—committed the most terrific ravages; the lungs were principally affected. Fracastorius, in his ‘Syphilis,’ describes the malady. The translation runs thus:

“A hundred years twice told have took their flight

Since Saturn mix’d with Mars his hated light,

Who, with their baleful influence, did infest

The rich and potent nations of the East:

Hence raged a dreadful pest before unknown,

Which seized the lungs, and made the breast its throne;

Four days it tyrannized with dreadful sway,

When life in purple streams broke out and fled away.”

This malady was accompanied by fever, difficulty of breathing, and spitting of blood; the respiration was so laborious that the sick were obliged to be always in an upright posture; deglutition was difficult, attended with flushed countenance and great restlessness: at the onset the cough was violent, but without loss of blood; after a short time, the expectoration becoming bloody, hemorrhage succeeded, when death ensued in three days: spots and abscesses sometimes formed when the disease was protracted unto the fifth day. After the disease had persisted for some months, the lungs were no longer affected, but the glands of the axillæ and of the groins, and the parotids, swelled and suppurated. In England it lasted nine years. There were 50,000 buried in one year in the Charterhouse churchyard in London. A murrain among the cattle succeeded this pestilence, and there was a great scarcity of all sorts of provisions. Greenland was entirely depopulated by this pestilence.

During the year 1348, the island of Cyprus was also visited by a most terrific pestilence; a tremendous earthquake shook the foundations of the island, and was accompanied by so frightful a hurricane, that the inhabitants who had slain the Mahometan slaves, in order that they might not themselves be subjugated by them, fled in dismay in all directions. The sea overflowed,—the ships were dashed to pieces on the rocks, and few outlived the dreadful event, whereby this fertile and blooming island was converted into a desert. Before the earthquake, it is recorded by Deguignes (p. 225) that a pestiferous wind spread so poisonous an odour, that many, being overpowered by it, fell down suddenly and expired in dreadful agonies. This phenomenon resembles many such noticed by ancient authors. This peculiar condition of the atmosphere was evident to the senses; borne by the winds, it spread from land to land, carrying disease over whole portions of the earth. It has been further recorded that, during this period, 1348, an unexampled earthquake, on the 25th of January, shook Greece, Italy, and the neighbouring countries. Naples, Rome, Pisa, Bologna, Padua, Venice, and many other cities suffered considerably; whole villages were swallowed up; castles, houses, and churches were overthrown, and thousands of people were buried under their ruins. In Carinthia, thirty villages, together with all the churches, were demolished; more than a thousand corpses were drawn from under the rubbish: the city of Villach was completely destroyed, and very few of its inhabitants were saved; when the earth ceased to tremble, it was found that mountains had been moved from their position, and that many hamlets were left in ruins. It is recorded that during this earthquake the wine in casks became turbid,—a statement which may be considered as furnishing a proof that changes causing a decomposition of the atmosphere had taken place; similar destructive earthquakes extended as far as the neighbourhood of Basle, and recurred from time to time until 1360 throughout Germany, France, Silesia, Poland, England, and Denmark also, much further north. In the month of August, 1349, says Walsingham, black death broke out at Southampton, destroying half the population. According to another estimate, (Rymer, Fœdera,) A.D. 1348–49, and 1350, one-tenth part of the people did not survive. In a royal edict, issued December, 1349, it is said, “Non modica pars populi est defuncta;” in another, 1350, “Magna pars populi est defuncta.” This pestilence spread over France and Germany, and invaded the northern parts of Europe in the year 1349.

In the years of our Lord 1350 and 1351 sore disease prevailed in Ireland, Holland, and in England; its infallible signs were, a great fever, vomiting, and spitting of blood, hemorrhage from the nose, mouth, ears, eyes, stomach, and bowels, indicating an universal disorganization of the system. Here we have the worst symptoms observable in the bilious remittent or yellow fever of the West Indies and other parts. It traversed all Germany, Russia, Hungary, Spain, and Gaul. In Denmark it spread terror and dismay, and it decimated Iceland; it persisted during the summer, autumn, winter, and spring of those years; and for several years after, violent peripneumoniæ raged in Asia, Egypt, and various other parts of the globe.—A.D. 1352. During this year scarcely one-fourth part of the Oxford students survived the plague. (A. Wood, Ath. Oxon., A.D. 1349–52.) It fell with redoubled violence on workmen and servants. The same year great numbers were carried off by pestilence in Montpelier. A great many of the lower orders of society died of the plague in England. This disease caused great ravages in Denmark, and also in Iceland; the Greenland merchants were all destroyed by it: it seized the monks and regular clergy of all descriptions; 133 out of 140 members died of one society in Montpelier. A similar mortality happened in the Magdalen Society; not one out of 140 in Marseilles survived; 66 Carmelites perished in Avignon. This plague began in a monastery of crowded, idle, voluptuous monks. Cattle suffered greatly in many countries; 6000 sheep died in one pasture in England. Pestilence and famine, it is supposed, carried off in China, about this period, at least 900,000 of its inhabitants: in London, 50,000 bodies were interred in one graveyard. The following estimate of deaths during the above awful period was considered below the actual number of victims: in Venice 100,000 died; Basle, 14,000; Erfurt, 16,000; Strasburgh, about the same number; Paris, 50,000; Norwich, in England, 50,000; Marseilles, in one month, 56,000! Florence, 60,000; Avignon, 62,000; London, 100,000; in Lubeck, 90,000; in Spain, two-thirds of the population were destroyed; and Ireland was nearly depopulated.

A.D. 1355, a peculiar kind of madness was epidemic in England; those affected fled into the woods, and wandered about the fields. (Hecker.) Three years after, epidemic pestilence ravaged England, Africa, Cyprus, and also Italy and Florence, which last city, says Petrarch, lost 100,000 citizens. The same kind of pestilence also afflicted Gaul, Ireland, and Scotland. Stow, in his Chronicle, gives a very graphic description of the foregoing pestilential period from 1348 up to 1357. The pestilence he describes as a new disease. He says: “There began amongst the East Indians and Tartarians a certain pestilence, which at length waxed so general, infecting the middle regions of the air so greatly, that it destroyed the Saracens, Turks, Syrians, Palestinians, and the Grecians with a wonderful or rather incredible death; insomuch that those people being exceedingly dismayed with the terror thereof, consulted among themselves, and thought it good to receive the Christian faith and sacraments; for they had intelligence that the Christians which dwelt on this side of the Greek Sea were not so greatly troubled with sickness and mortality more than common.” “At length this terrible slaughter passed over into those countries which are on this side the Alps, and thence to the parts of France which are called Hesperia, and so on, by order, along into Germany and Dutchland; and the seventh year after it began, it came into England, and first began in the towns and ports joining on the sea-coasts, Dorsetshire, where, even as in other countries, it made the country quite void of inhabitants, so that there were almost none left alive. Thence it passed into Devonshire and Somersetshire, and even into Bristol, and raged in such sort that the Gloucestershire men would not suffer persons from Bristol to have any access unto them or into their country by any means; but at length it came to Gloucester, yea, and to Oxford and London, and finally it spread over all England, and so wasted and spoiled the people, that scarce the tenth person of all sorts was left alive; churchyards were not sufficient and large enough to bury their dead in: they chose certain fields appointed for the purpose, amongst which was the piece of ground denominated the Churchyard of the Holy Trinity, near East Smithfield, opened by one John Cory. One Walter Manny also purchased a piece of ground called Spital Croft, containing thirteen acres, in which were interred during the next year 50,000 bodies; in Norwich, no less than 37,104 persons, besides Mendicants and Dominicans, and in Yarmouth 7502; so that the living which was previously worth 700 marks was reduced to £40 per year.” “What time this pestilence had wasted all England, the Scots, greatly rejoicing, mocked and swore ofttimes, ‘By the vile death of the Englishmen;’ but the sword of God’s wrath slew and consumed the Scots in no less numbers than it did the other. It also wasted the Welshmen, and within a while passed over into Ireland, where it destroyed a great number of English people that dwelt there; but such as were right Irish-born, that dwelt in the hilly country, it scarcely touched, so that few of them died thereof.”

A.D. 1360. Thunder-storms, accompanied by heavy rains and lightning, did much damage in various parts of England; houses were set on fire, crops and cattle were destroyed, and pestilence, in the shape of fevers and disorder of the bowels, carried off numbers.

On the 21st of January, two years after, A.D. 1362, a feast was instituted, and a solemn mass celebrated in Scio, with divine worship in all the churches, convents, and other public places, at which all the clergy of the place assisted; and on the 15th of February a papal jubilee was published for the repose of the souls of all those who had perished by the pestilence, which had recently carried off vast numbers.

A.D. 1363, a dreadfully severe winter presaged noxious seasons in Europe. Andalusia was afflicted with a terrible pestilence, which having seized an almost incredible number of its inhabitants, is marked among the ancient writings as the second mortality, in order to distinguish it from the first of 1350, during which King Don Alonso died in the neighbourhood of Gibraltar. This pestilence made such an impression on the minds of all Spaniards, that in a sepulchral inscription in the church of St. Pablo, we read that it was erected during the second mortality, A.D. 1363. Two years after, A.D. 1365, pestilence carried off 20,000 of the inhabitants of Cologne and its vicinity.

From the year 1368 unto 1370, epidemic pestilence ravaged England and Ireland; four years after, it continued to lay England waste. A similar pestilence, about the same time, prevailed with great mortality in Italy and in Gaul.

A.D. 1371, pestilence was rife at Barcelona; and on the 13th of June, imprecatory processions were instituted in each of the parishes of that place on account of the pestilence, which lasted for one year. A comet was seen this year.

A.D. 1372, pestilence invaded Germany, Egypt, Greece, and all the East. Lubeck lost 90,000 of its inhabitants.

A.D. 1373, the use of coals was forbidden by Act of Parliament, under the idea that the smoke in London corrupted the air.

In the year of our Lord 1374, the epidemic dancing disease of St. Guy and St. John prevailed in Holland and in the Rhenish provinces, and an analogous malady, called ‘Tarantisme’ and ‘Tigretier,’ among the Abyssinians; a similar disease also prevailed in the Shetland Islands, where it had existed from time to time, as it is said, for one hundred years previously. The disease also prevailed in France, and the sufferers were called ‘Convulsionnaires;’ it was evidently the malady which we now term St. Vitus’ Dance or Chorea, but prevailing epidemically. Hecker gives the following account of this strange malady, as it occurred about this period also in Germany; it was evidently a disease similar to that which broke out, A.D. 1027, in Bernburg, prevailed A.D. 1237 at Erfurt among children, and subsequently among adults, A.D. 1278, at Utrecht. He says “that the effects of the ‘Black Death’ had not yet subsided, and the graves of millions of its victims were scarcely closed when a strange delusion arose in Germany, which took possession of the minds of men, and, in spite of the divinity of our nature, hurried away body and soul into the magic circle of hellish superstition. It was a convulsion which, in the most extraordinary manner, infuriated the human frame, and excited the astonishment of contemporaries for more than two centuries, since which time it has never re-appeared. It was called the Dance of St. John or of St. Vitus, on account of the Bacchantic leaps by which it was characterized, and which gave to those affected, whilst performing their wild dance, and screaming and foaming with fury, all the appearance of persons possessed. It did not remain confined to particular localities, but was propagated by the sight of the sufferers, like a demoniacal epidemic, over the whole of Germany and the neighbouring countries to the north-west, which were already prepared for its reception by the prevailing opinion of the times.

“So early as the year 1374, assemblages of men and women were seen at Aix-la-Chapelle, who had come out of Germany, and who, united by one common delusion, exhibited to the public, both in the streets and in the churches, the following strange spectacle. They formed circles hand-in-hand, and, appearing to have lost all control over their senses, continued dancing, regardless of the by-standers, for hours together, in wild delirium, until at length they fell down to the ground in a state of exhaustion. They then complained of extreme oppression, and groaned as if in the agonies of death, until they were swathed in cloths bound tightly round their waists, upon which they again recovered, and remained free from complaint until the next attack. This practice of swathing was resorted to on account of the tympany which followed these spasmodic ravings, but the by-standers frequently relieved patients in a less artificial manner by thumping and trampling upon the parts affected. While dancing, they neither saw nor heard, being insensible to external impressions through the senses, but were haunted by visions, their fancies conjuring up spirits, whose names they shrieked out; and some of them afterwards asserted that they felt as if they had been immersed in a stream of blood, which obliged them to leap so high. Others during the paroxysm saw the heavens open and the Saviour enthroned with the Virgin Mary, according as the religious notions of the age were strangely and variously reflected in their imaginations.

“Where the disease was completely developed, the attack commenced with epileptic convulsions. Those affected fell to the ground senseless, panting and labouring for breath; they foamed at the mouth, and suddenly springing up, began their dance amidst strange contortions. Yet the malady doubtless made its appearance very variously, and was modified by temporary or local circumstances, whereof non-medical contemporaries but imperfectly noted the essential particulars, accustomed as they were to confound their observations of natural events with their notions of the world of spirits.

“It was but a few months ere this demoniacal disease had spread from Aix-la-Chapelle, where it appeared in July, over the neighbouring Netherlands. In Liege, Utrecht, Tongres, and many other towns of Belgium, the dancers appeared with garlands in their hair, and their waists girt with cloths, that they might, as soon as the paroxysm was over, receive immediate relief on the attack of the tympany. This bandage was, by the insertion of a stick, easily twisted tight; many, however, obtained more relief from kicks and blows, which they found numbers of persons ready to administer; for where the dancers appeared, the people assembled in crowds to gratify their curiosity with the frightful spectacle. At length the increasing number of the affected excited no less anxiety than the attention that was paid to them. In towns and villages they took possession of the religious houses; processions were everywhere instituted on their account, and masses were said, and hymns were sung, while the disease itself, of the demoniacal origin of which no one entertained the least doubt, excited everywhere astonishment and horror. In Liege the priests had recourse to exorcisms, and endeavoured by every means in their power to allay an evil which threatened so much danger to themselves; for the possessed, assembling in multitudes, frequently poured forth imprecations against them and menaced their destruction. They intimidated the people also to such a degree that there was an express ordinance issued, that no one should make any but square-toed shoes, because these fanatics had manifested a morbid dislike to the pointed shoes which had come into fashion immediately after the great mortality in 1350. They were still more irritated at the sight of red colours, the influence of which on the disordered nerves might lead us to imagine an extraordinary accordance between this spasmodic malady and the condition of infuriated animals; but in the St. John’s dancers this excitement was probably connected with apparitions, consequent on their convulsions. There were likewise some of them who were unable to endure the sight of persons weeping.” “A few months after this dancing malady had made its appearance at Aix-la-Chapelle, it broke out at Cologne, where the number of those possessed amounted to more than five hundred; and about the same time at Metz, the streets of which place are said to have been filled with eleven hundred dancers. * * * * * Girls and boys quitted their parents, and servants their masters, to amuse themselves at the dances of those possessed, and greedily imbibed the poison of mental infection. Above a hundred unmarried women were seen raving about, in consecrated and unconsecrated places, and the consequences were soon perceived. Gangs of idle vagabonds, who understood how to imitate to the life the gestures and convulsions of those really affected, roved from place to place, seeking maintenance and adventures, and thus wherever they went spread this disgusting spasmodic disease like a plague; for in maladies of this kind the susceptible are infected as easily by the appearance as by the reality. At last it was found necessary to drive away these mischievous guests, who were equally inaccessible to the exorcisms of the priests and the remedies of the physicians. It was not, however, until after four months that the Rhenish cities were able to suppress these impostures, which had so alarmingly increased the original evil.”

A.D. 1375, on the 20th of June, an imprecatory procession was instituted at Scio, on account of the dreadful pestilence which broke out there, and which raged more than twelve months. (Vide Capmany, ‘Historical and Chronological Compendium of Plagues,’ p. 66.)

A.D. 1379, epidemic pestilence prevailed in England, especially in the northern parts of the island. A.D. 1380, there was a general inundation in Spain, from which resulted epidemic pestilence, characteristic of an atmosphere surcharged with moisture. Three years after, 1383, was a period most fatal to Seville, in consequence of a pestilence having broken out there, which extended through its entire length and breadth. This terrible infliction was called by the old inhabitants the third mortality: it was preceded by inundations and extraordinary showers, which act unquestionably as predisposing causes of disease. A severe earthquake destroyed several churches A.D. 1382.

We have seen that the years 1350 and 1363 were denominated the years of the first and second mortality. The precautionary measures that were adopted to meet such evils were the formation of various hospitals for the treatment of the sick, instituted by the bishop, dean, and ecclesiastical and secular chapters. The physicians and surgeons not only contributed by their science to the relief of the plague-stricken, but also with their personal charity and the salaries which were assigned them by the city authorities. A hospital was founded under the protection of St. Cosmo and St. Amien in the parish of St. Salvalo, the patronage of which was given to the city.

A.D. 1384. During this year the third plague of Mallorca broke out; it caused considerable mortality, according to the account given by Vincente Mut in his history of that kingdom. Numbers of the soldiers of the army of Don Juan, the first king of Castile, who were in garrison at Lisbon, fell sick in consequence of the severity of the atmospheric changes, to which they were unaccustomed. The losses and sufferings of the Castilian camp increased every day, and hundreds of them became ill, and consequently the king was induced to change his position and remove his armada to Seville.

At the commencement of 1386 there was in Gallicia much sickness among the soldiers commanded by Tornas Moraix: the character of the epidemic is but imperfectly given, but history states the mortality to have been very great.

A.D. 1387, the army of the King of Portugal and of the Duke of Lancaster suffered from severe pestilence in Benavento, and in the towns of Matillas, Arzon, Villalobos, Rales, and Valderas, owing to the scarcity of provisions. In the years 1388 and 1389, violent tempests, preceded by great drought, happened; a famine ensued, when anginas and dysenteries prevailed in England and in other parts of the world. The disease affected children principally, and continued unto 1400. During this period, 1391, the disease was especially mortal in England, being felt most severely in Norfolk and at York. The year previously, 1390, when King Edward was on his march and within two leagues of Chartres, a violent storm arose, with thunder and lightning, which killed 6000 of his horses and upwards of 1000 of his best troops.

A.D. 1394, a great mortality occurred from epidemic pestilence in the kingdom of Valencia and in the principality of Catalonia, arising from great heat; nearly 10,000 persons, a greater part of whom were young, died in the city of Valencia alone. This pestilence occurred during the reign of King Don Juan.—A.D. 1396. On the 9th of December of this year, King Don Martin retired to the city of Perpignan in consequence of Barcelona being visited by pestilence.

A.D. 1400. The continued heavy rains and sterility having induced famine in Seville, caused also great mortality and pestilence, which diminished the population wonderfully. The author of the Annals of Seville mentions that this plague occurred at centenary periods.

A.D. 1401. A comet was seen. Pestilence broke out at Florence. 30,000 persons died of epidemic disease this year in London. Five years after, London was revisited by deadly pestilence. In Bourdeaux a malignant dysentery destroyed 14,000 persons, and a similar disease was equally fatal in Aquitaine and Gascony. A.D. 1407, the Mediterranean was frozen over for fifteen weeks.—A.D. 1411. Two diseases, very similar, appeared in France this year, and were equally general; the first was called ‘Tac,’ the second ‘Ladendo:’ both were accompanied by severe cough. In the Ladendo there seems to have been some affection of the kidney of an inflammatory nature: the pain was as severe as in a fit of the stone, and was followed by fever, loss of appetite, and incessant cough, which terminated very frequently in unpleasant eruptions about the nose and mouth; the disease ran its course generally in fifteen days, and was unattended by danger, notwithstanding the severity of the symptoms. Three years after, an epidemic disease of a similar nature re-appeared in France, when it received the name of ‘Coqueluche:’ it was attended with severe hoarseness, and was so general that all public business in Paris was interrupted by it.

A.D. 1410. Epidemic pestilence broke out at Seville this year; it commenced in Niebla, Gibraleon, and Trigueros, and extended thence to Seville, where it raged from March unto August. On the 30th of May and on the 5th of August an earthquake was felt at Barcelona, and epidemic pestilence prevailed, which lasted until the anniversary of the Nativity.

CHAPTER IV.
FROM A.D. 1418 TO 1530.

A.D. 1418, Strasburgh was visited by the ‘Dancing Plague,’ and the same infatuation existed amongst the people there, as in the towns of Belgium and the Lower Rhine A.D. 1374; many who were seized on seeing the affected, excited attention at first by their confused and absurd behaviour, and then by their constantly following the swarms of dancers. These were seen day and night passing through the streets, accompanied by musicians playing on bagpipes, and by innumerable spectators attracted by curiosity, to whom were added anxious parents and relations who came to look after those among the misguided multitude who belonged to their respective families.

Imposture and profligacy played their part in this city also, but the morbid delusion itself seems to have predominated. On this account religion could only bring provisional aid, and therefore the Town Council benevolently took an interest in the afflicted: they divided them into separate parties, to each of which they appointed responsible superintendents, to protect them from harm, and perhaps also to restrain their turbulence. They were thus conducted on foot and in carriages to the chapels of St. Vitus, near Zabern, and Rotestein, where priests were in attendance to influence their misguided minds by masses and other religious ceremonies. After divine worship was completed, they were led in solemn procession to the altar, where they made some small offering of alms, and where, it is probable, many, through the influence of devotion and the sanctity of the place, were cured of this lamentable aberration.

It is worthy of observation, at all events, that the dancing mania did not recommence at the altars of the saint, that from him alone assistance was implored, and that through his miraculous interposition a cure was expected, which was beyond the reach of human skill. The personal history of St. Vitus is by no means unimportant in this matter. He was a Sicilian youth, who, together with Modestus and Crescentia, suffered martyrdom at the time of the persecution of the Christians under Diocletian, in A.D. 303. The legends respecting him are obscure, and he would certainly have been passed over without notice among the innumerable apocryphal martyrs of the earliest centuries, had not the transfer of his body to St. Denys, and thence in the year 836 to Corvey, raised him to a higher rank. From this time forth it may be supposed that many miracles were performed at his new sepulchre, which were of essential service in confirming the Roman Catholic faith among the Germans, and St. Vitus was soon ranked among the fourteen saintly helpers (Nothelfer or Apotheker). His altars were multiplied, and the people had recourse to them in all kinds of distresses; they revered him as a powerful intercessor. As the worship of these saints was, however, at that time stripped of all historical connexions, which were purposely obliterated by the priesthood, a legend was invented at the beginning of the fifteenth century, or perhaps even so early as the fourteenth, that St. Vitus had, just before he bent his neck to the sword, prayed to God that he might protect from the dancing mania all those who should solemnize the day of his commemoration and fast upon its eve, and that thereupon a voice from heaven was heard, saying, “Vitus, thy prayer is accepted.” Thus St. Vitus became the patron saint of those affected with the dancing plague, as St. Martin of Tours was at one time the succourer of persons in small-pox; St. Anthony, of those suffering under the ‘hellish fire;’ and as St. Margaret was the Juno Lucina of pregnant women.

A.D. 1426, the Baltic was frozen over, and on the 28th of September a severe earthquake was felt in England. Dantzic was visited by pestilence and famine; and the year following, England suffered from epidemic pestilence, and a severe earthquake, which occurred on the 14th of July.

A.D. 1429, epidemic pestilence prevailed at Barcelona, as is proved by the donation of £8 and 16 sueldos, which were paid to a chaplain for his labour in removing for burial the dead bodies found in the churches and elsewhere.

A.D. 1434, there was a severe frost in England, which lasted from the 24th of November to the 10th of February in the following year.

This year, 1436, the seasons were inclement and rainy, and there was a dearth of corn in various parts of Europe. Epidemic coughs, small pox, and fevers swept away many thousands from the face of the earth. The moisture which existed during the preceding year in Spain, was excessive; it did not cease raining and snowing in Castile from the 29th of October, 1434, to the 7th of January in the following year, 1435.

Four years after, 1439, the city Huesca, in the kingdom of Aragon, suffered from such a cruel pestilence, that, following the credulity of the times, Alonso de Burgos says in his Treatise on Plague, “that the disease in Huesca only yielded to a solemn and general vow which the city made, to celebrate a feast on the day of the Conception of the Virgin, and to observe its vigil with an absolute fast.”

A.D. 1438, there was a famine in England. During a storm on the 25th of November a heavy gust of wind blew off the leads of the Grey Friars Church, in London, and almost beat down the whole side of a street called the Old Exchange.

A.D. 1441. During this year, brother Diego de Herrera complained of an itching, or leprosy, all over his body: the physicians declared the disease to be communicable, and obliged him to live outside the monastery of Mejorada—a fact showing that this disease had existed previously in Spain, and that the physicians were acquainted with its characters. These observations are to be found in the life of the illustrious Senhor Don Diego de Anaya, Archbishop of Granada.

A.D. 1443, there was a severe frost in England from the 14th of November until the 10th of February in the following year. A thunder-storm with severe lightning did much damage to St. Paul’s Church and to that of Waltham Cross; they were fired by the lightning on Candlemas day. From about this period until 1450, famine and pestilence were destructive to millions of the human race, especially in Italy, Gaul, Germany, Asia, and Spain. About the same date, King Don Alonso of Aragon, surnamed the Wise, conquered the kingdom of Naples. The great obstacles which presented themselves before accomplishing the subjugation of the provinces of Abruzzo, coupled with the sufferings caused by a protracted and desperate war, subjected the numerous cavalry employed in the service to attacks of disease. Great numbers of their horses died from a particular kind of epizootic. This great mortality caused the king to order his major domo, one Manuel Diaz, to call together all the veterinary surgeons of his cavalry and the surgeons of the infantry, in order that they should compose a work on farriery—thus giving rise to the renewal of that most useful art, as noted in the Spanish Hippiatria, or Veterinary of Spain.

A.D. 1446, the sea broke down the dykes at Dort, in Holland, on the 17th of April, and drowned 100,000 persons.

A.D. 1448. “Owing to the heavy rains of the previous year, 1447,” says Martinez de Leiva, “a severe pestilence prevailed, which was attributed to the excess of moisture, conjoined with the unprecedented heat:” it was rife in various parts of Spain. On the 11th of October, public prayers were offered up at Barcelona on account of this pestilence and of other calamities, such as earthquakes, &c. During this year great mortality occurred in the army of King Alonso V., encamped in the neighbourhood of Pomblein.

A.D. 1450, in the month of June, a pestilence broke out in the city of Saragossa. Zurita, who in his Annals of Aragon gives an account of this pestilence, specifies but little, although it is known to have raged for some time, and to have extended to Barcelona, where it continued for two years after (1452). On the Sabbath, the 22nd of April, the authorities of this city, Barcelona, despatched a state-messenger to the monasteries of Saint Gerónimo de la Murta, of the district of Ebro, de Monte Alegre, de Poblet, de Santa Cruce, and de Escala Dei, to solicit the brethren to implore the Almighty to relieve them from the sore pestilence with which the city was visited. On the 13th of June of this year, the Queen Donna Maria retired, with her Court, from the city, for fear of the pestilence.

A.D. 1456. There were two comets observed this year: three years after, 1459, the Baltic was so frozen over, that people travelled on the ice from Denmark to Lubeck, Wismar, Rostock, and Stralsund.

A.D. 1465, pestilence again visited Italy. On the 6th of December of this year, the brothers Miguel Capelier and Leonardo Crestia, of the order of St. Francis of the Convent of Jesus, were deputed by the corporation of the city of Barcelona to implore the interposition of the Almighty to free the city from pestilence. The year following, Cadiz was nearly depopulated by a plague. Other parts of Spain suffered also from epidemic pestilence; so much so, that on the 7th of January, 1466, the Council of Ciento voted that the Feast of St. Sebastian should not be observed, on account of the epidemic which was raging at Barcelona. Further, on Thursday, the 13th, the Council of Thirty-two determined that an image of the guardian angel should be erected; and on the 17th of November following there was a solemn procession ordered.

A.D. 1468, epidemic pestilence raged at Parma.

A.D. 1471, Pope Sextus erected a brothel at Rome, and the Roman prostitutes paid him a weekly tax, which amounted to 20,000 ducats a year.

A.D. 1472, a comet was seen. The year following, 1473, excessive heat and drought prevailed, which persisted for three years. About this period, 1474, the city of Valencia suffered from a severe epidemic. Luis Alcanyis, a famous Valencian physician, published a treatise in the Limosin language (that of the Troubadours), without giving either the place of printing or the year of publication; but it seems that he flourished about this period (1474), and that his treatise was written in consequence of the epidemic under notice: it was entitled, ‘Regiment preservatiu é curatiu de la Pestilencia, compost per Mestre Luis Alcanyis, Mestre en Medicina.’

A.D. 1475–76, the Danube was fordable in Hungary, and swarms of locusts destroyed all vegetation there and in Poland. The second pestilence, which devastated the island of Mallorca, according to the authority of Don Vincente Mut, occurred. A Board of Health was formed by the governor of Mallorca, Don Berengario Blanels, in order to prescribe rules for government and remedial measures. This ‘Morbeira,’ or Board of Health, was composed of a magistrate, a knight, a physician, a surgeon, a tradesman, and a merchant. Quarantine for forty days was established. In this year there was published a work entitled ‘De Epidemiâ et Peste, Magistri Vallestii Tarentini, Artium Medicinæque Doctoris eximii,’ which was translated by Dr. Juan Villar into the Castilian language. In the latter year (1476), the Council of One Hundred ordered an imprecatory chapel to be consecrated at St. Roque, in consequence of the prevalence of a terrible plague at Barcelona, which lasted from the 27th of March until the 13th of November. On the 13th of July in the same year, a solemn procession took place, in which were exhibited the bodies of St. Severus and St. Innocent.

A.D. 1477, in the reign of their Catholic majesties Don Fernando de Aragon and Doña Isabel de Castilla, there broke out a wretched pestilence of leprosy, which may be said to have prevailed epidemically, so numerous were the cases. The duty of examining those affected, and of expelling them from the cities and villages, was a task exclusively imposed on the priests, in accordance with divine authority, as laid down in Leviticus chap. xiii. Epidemic pestilence, attended with bubo, prevailed in Italy, and raged without interruption until 1485. Swarms of locusts committed great ravages in various parts of the South of Europe, from the year 1478 until 1482. Within this period, say in the years 1480 and 1481, malignant epidemics appeared in the train of drought and famine in Switzerland and Germany; while putrid fever, accompanied by phrenitis, prevailed in Westphalia, Hesse, and Friesland. There never had been, in the memory of the inhabitants of these places, so many ignes fatui as during this period. The harvests also failed, rendering it necessary to obtain supplies of provisions from Thuringia.

A.D. 1482, France, under the fearful reign of Louis XI., after two years of scarcity, became the scene of a devastating plague: it raged in the form of an inflammatory fever, with delirium, accompanied by such intense cephalalgia, that many are reported to have dashed out their brains against the walls of their houses, or to have rushed into the water.

A.D. 1483, there was so great an inundation in Gloucestershire, that all the country round about was overflowed, and many persons were drowned in their beds. The waters did not abate for ten days,—thus preventing the Duke of Buckingham from passing the river into Wales to join the Welsh, who had risen against King Richard III., and consequently being indirectly the cause of the duke’s misfortunes and of his violent death. Barcelona was again visited by a pestilence, which lasted upwards of a year. The river Severn in England overflowed; epidemic pestilence was the consequence. During the following years, 1484–85, it extended all over England, having first broken out at Shrewsbury, where, according to the testimony of Dr. Caius, who resided in that town, 960 died in a few days. Some authorities have spoken of this pestilence as having occurred under circumstances extremely favourable to the generation of a malignant disease, for it is said to have first appeared in the army of the Earl of Richmond, afterwards King Henry VII., upon his landing at Milford Haven in 1485. This army consisted of foreign troops, brought over in crowded transport-vessels. They were described by a contemporary historian, Philip de Comines, as the most wretched soldiery he ever beheld, collected, it is probable, from jails and hospitals, and buried in filth. The disease soon spread to London, where it raged from the beginning of August to the end of October, having assumed a particular type: it was termed ‘sudor Anglicus,’ or sweating sickness, and proved to be a mortal epidemic. It also prevailed in Ireland. The symptoms were those of a violent inflammatory fever, which, after a short time, caused great prostration of strength. There were also present, oppression at the stomach, and violent headache, accompanied by lethargic stupor, and the body was covered with a profuse fœtid perspiration. The progress of this singular malady was very rapid, a crisis always taking place within the space of a day and a night. The internal heat from which the patient suffered was intolerable, yet every thing cold, or even cool, was certain death. Two lord mayors and six aldermen died in one week. The disease attacked the most robust and strong, and spread without interruption over the entire kingdom, from east to west. In a very short period vast numbers of the population fell victims to this strange epidemic. Many of those who recovered from the first attack were seized a second, and some even a third time. Persons of rank, of the ecclesiastical and civil classes, were not exempt; and great was the consternation when the disease broke out in Oxford. The heads of colleges and the students fled in all directions, and this celebrated university was deserted for six weeks. Three months later, it appeared at Croyland, and carried off Lambert Fossedyke, abbot of the monastery, on the 14th of November. During this period, epidemic pestilence was rife in Germany, Switzerland, Sweden, Denmark, and Egypt.

A.D. 1485. This year, pestilence broke out in Seville, the mortality from which was increased by the heavy rains and inundations of the subsequent winter. The year following, Saragossa and other parts of the kingdom of Aragon suffered from epidemic pestilence: it was of a peculiar bubonic or glandular kind, the cure of which was attributed to the intercession of Santo Pedro Arbues, one of the first Grand Inquisitors of Spain, murdered by the populace for his cruelties, and afterwards canonized by the papacy.

A.D. 1488, pestilence prevailed in Andalusia, which must have been very fatal, especially in the army which King Don Ferdinand commanded, although no correct accounts of its mortality are on record.

In the year 1489, Barcelona was again visited by a dire pestilence: it broke out on the 3rd of November, and lasted until the 16th of September in the following year. In vol. i. of the ‘Biblioteca Halleri’ there is a memoir published by Pedro Martyr de Anglesia, in which is noted a certain disease accompanied by a pain in the joints, fœtid ulcers in the mouth, and pustules, which are regarded by some modern writers as the symptoms of the French pox (morbus Gallicus).

A.D. 1490, a bilious remittent fever was rife in various parts of Europe. A putrid fever, supposed by some to have arisen from the unburied bodies in Granada, raged with dreadful violence; by others it was stated to have been imported by some soldiers who came from the island of Cyprus, in which place this kind of fever was endemic.

A.D. 1492. Epidemic variola was unknown to the Indians until it was conveyed to the East by the commercial intercourse of the Dutch: it was also supposed to have been introduced into America by a negro slave of Pamfilo Narvaes, when that Spanish general proceeded to Mexico against his enemy, Hernando Cortés. The inhabitants of Zempoala lost great numbers, and 16,000 Indians fell its victims.

In the year 1493, says Don Vincente Mut, there happened the fifth plague in the island of Mallorca; it was called the plague of Boja, and was so termed from the name of the man who is supposed to have introduced it into the island.

During this period, Barcelona was revisited by pestilence, which lasted from the 13th of June until the 4th of October. That the venereal disease was not introduced from America into Europe this year, by means of the troops of Admiral Christobal Colon, is a point which has been already demonstrated in history. Astruc exhibits great erudition in showing that the disease was not known before the years 1494 and 1496. In the list of writers of the kingdom of Valencia, furnished by Vincente Ximeno, we learn that a Pedro Pintor was born in that capital A.D. 1420, and died at Rome in 1503: he was physician to Alexander the Sixth, who was also a Valencian, having been born in the part called Xativa. From the historical writings of Pintor, and of contemporary authors, it seems evident, as suggested by Dr. Sanchez, that the venereal disease, during its first prevalence, was a pestilential fever, which was communicable through the genitals, and otherwise; and that at that period there was no discredit or stigma attached to those who were afflicted with it: it was not considered to be contra bonos mores. The Valencian author, following up the astrological notions of his time, attributes the disease to the same causes as epidemic plagues or pestilences.

During the vernal equinox of this year, this description of pestilence broke out in the city of Rome, as is gathered from the following quotation: “Talis autem epidemia in urbe Romanâ contigit anno 1493 mense Martii, post introitum solis in primum minutum Arietis.” This disease was first noticed in the month of August.

Pedro Pintor, according to Cotunnius, professor of anatomy at Naples, was amongst the earliest writers upon the venereal disease: his work, entitled ‘De Morbo Fœdo his temporibus affligente,’ was published at Rome A.D. 1500. He attributed the origin of the disease to a conjunction of the planets, and no doubt he was acquainted with the circumstance of the disease being propagated by cohabitation with a diseased person. Several of the inhabitants of Rome were attacked A.D. 1493, and the disease became common there until 1499; it principally attacked the limbs with excruciating pains and pustular eruptions, against which the physicians employed mercurial ointment mixed with lead,—an invention said to be due to a Portuguese. So rife did the pestilence become, that, according to Ruy Diaz de Isla, a native of Andalusia, their majesties Don Fernando de Aragon and Doña Isabel de Castilla gave instructions to their physicians to attend to those stricken with the disease, who were received into the hospital of San Salvador. Great numbers of the first professors and physicians of the land investigated the symptoms of the disease, and after treating it with the thousand and one remedies thought of with but little success, it was considered to be a chastisement from Heaven which befel all constitutions and conditions.

With reference to the origin of this pestilence—the venereal disease, there are various opinions. When it broke out in the French army at Naples A.D. 1495, the French called it ‘the disease of Naples,’ and said that at the siege of that place there were certain merchants who barrelled the flesh of men slain in Barbary, which they sold for tunny! and that from such food the disease originated. It is certain that cannibals are much infested with the venereal disease. It was known in England before 1162, and was called ‘Brenning’ or ‘Burning.’ This appears from Bishop Winton’s records of the public stews. The disease is well described by one Arden, who was surgeon to Richard II., in 1156, in a work expressly written on the subject.

A.D. 1495, King Don Fernando convoked the Cortes in the city of Tarragona, in consequence of the pestilence raging at Saragossa: it was attended by buboes, carbuncles, &c.; and in the following year, 1496, it appeared in a petechial form among the soldiers employed in Granada. Syphilis also prevailed at Naples amongst the troops of Charles VIII.

In the year 1496, an epidemic ulceration, as it was then called, of the skin (epidemic scurvy), invaded the inhabitants of Germany, Portugal, Ireland, and other countries.

A.D. 1497, Barcelona was again visited by epidemic pestilence: it made its appearance about the 18th of July, and continued until November. Gaspar Torella, a native of Valencia, physician and domestic prelate to Alexander VI., wrote a work upon the Morbus Gallicus, which was printed at Rome, according to Haller’s account, in the year 1497. Astruc makes mention of another work, entitled ‘Ex Coitu cum Impurâ Muliere.’

In the year 1498, Francisco Lopez de Villalobos, physician to Charles V. and to his son Philip II., published in Salamanca a folio work entitled ‘Sumario de la Medicina.’ Juan de Banos, in the first ten numbers of his ‘Voyages of the Portuguese to the East Indies,’ gives a circumstantial account of a pestilence which seized on the crews of their fleet after they had passed the Cape of Good Hope. The malady commenced with erysipelas and putrescence of the gums, so that those who were attacked were unable to take food; their bodies were racked with excruciating pains, and the stench from them was intolerable. This disease was evidently scurvy.

A.D. 1499, a great plague prevailed in Britain, carrying off thousands; 30,000 were reported to have perished from it in London alone. The king found it advisable to retire with all his Court to Calais. In Brussels, epidemic pestilence victimized daily 500 persons; mould-spots (signacula) were observed in Germany and in France. There was a great mortality from murrain in cattle in Germany, and very extensive destruction of all vegetation by blights and caterpillars. The inhabitants of both France and Germany suffered greatly from severe epidemic disease during this period; it assumed a glandular form, and continued until the year 1503. This pestilence, says Schenckius, was accompanied in some parts of Europe by famine, which was followed by a most vehement intemperature of the seasons; for a winter preceded, so terribly severe as to kill the brute creation everywhere, and the heat of the summer was of such cruel intensity that trees were set on fire by the heat of the sun: in fine, this year may be said to have been the commencement of a century of putrid malignant diseases,—a century replete with grand phenomena affecting human life in general. In the year 1501, epidemic pestilence, says Luis Lobera de Avila, made its appearance at Barcelona; it began about the middle of October, and spread to various other parts of Spain. The disease, according to the superstition of the times, was attributed to a celestial influence. During this period, the use of guaiacum, or holy wood, in the treatment of the venereal disease, was discovered: it was afterwards introduced into Italy about the year 1517, where its utility was first made known by a Spanish presbyter. Plague again visited Barcelona, and sadly crippled its commerce. The viceroy of Sicily prohibited the entry of shipping coming thence.

In the year 1504, China was nearly depopulated by pestilence. There was also a great mortality in Ireland from epidemic disease; and plague, about the same period, raged in Spain, in which country a severe earthquake was experienced on the 5th of April: it did a great deal of mischief, especially in Andalusia. About the same period a dreadful shock was felt at Lisbon, which continued for eight days, overthrowing several churches and more than 1500 houses, under the ruins of which upwards of 20,000 persons met their death. Several of the neighbouring towns were swallowed up, with vast numbers of their inhabitants. The year following, two comets were observed. Spotted fever was rife all over Europe, and pestilence prevailed in Lisbon.

In the summer of the year 1505, the sweating sickness again reared its head in England; the disease first broke out in London: it was of a much milder form than that which prevailed in the year 1485; it disappeared towards the close of the autumn, and appears to have been confined to England: no remarkable phenomena were observed here during this pestilence; it was otherwise, however, in other parts of Europe. The summer was wet, and the winter following a severe one; comets were seen in this and the following year, and an eruption of Vesuvius took place.

A.D. 1506. From the 15th to the 26th of January, there blew a violent storm from the south-west, which drove the King of Castile, Philip of Austria, with his consort Joanna, from the Netherlands to Weymouth; and as, some days before, a golden eagle falling from St. Paul’s Church in London had crushed a black eagle which ornamented some lower building, evil predictions were promulgated among the people respecting the fate of this son of the Emperor.