and in 590 a great epidemic at Rome is connected with the
pontificate of Gregory the Great. But it spread in fact over the
whole Roman world, beginning in maritime towns and radiating
inland. In another direction it extended from Egypt along the
north coast of Africa. Whether the numerous pestilences
recorded in the 7th century were the plague cannot now be said;
but it is possible the pestilences in England chronicled by Bede
in the years 664, 672, 679 and 683 may have been of this disease,
especially as in 690 pestis inguinaria is again recorded in Rome.
For the epidemics of the succeeding centuries we must refer to
more detailed works.[1]
It is impossible, however, to pass over the great cycle of epidemics in the 14th century known as the Black Death. Whether in all the pestilences known by this name the disease was really the same may admit of doubt, but it is clear that in some at least it was the bubonicThe Black Death. plague. Contemporary observers agree that the disease was introduced from the East; and one eyewitness, Gabriel de Mussis, an Italian lawyer, traced, or indeed accompanied, the march of the plague from the Crimea (whither it was said to have been introduced from Tartary) to Genoa, where with a handful of survivors of a Genoese expedition he landed probably at the end of the year 1347. He narrates how the few that had themselves escaped the pest transmitted the contagion to all they met.[2] Other accounts, especially old Russian chronicles, place the origin of the disease still farther east, in Cathay (or China), where, as is confirmed to some extent by Chinese records, pestilence and destructive inundations are said to have destroyed the enormous number of thirteen millions. It appears to have passed by way of Armenia into Asia Minor and thence to Egypt and northern Africa. Nearly the whole of Europe was gradually overrun by the pestilence. It reached Sicily in 1346, Constantinople, Greece and parts of Italy early in 1347, and towards the end of that year Marseilles. In 1348 it attacked Spain, northern Italy and Rome, eastern Germany, many parts of France including Paris, and England; from England it is said to have been conveyed to the Scandinavian countries. In England the western counties were first invaded early in the year, and London in November. In 1349 we hear of it in the midlands; and in subsequent years, at least till 1357, it prevailed in parts of the country, or generally, especially in the towns. In 1352 Oxford lost two-thirds of her academical population. The outbreaks of 136: and 1368, known as the second and third plagues of the reign of Edward III., were doubtless of the same disease, though by some historians not called the black death. Scotland and Ireland, though later affected, did not escape.
The nature of this pestilence has been a matter of much controversy, and some have doubted its being truly the plague. But when the symptoms are fully described they seem to justify this conclusion, one character only being thought to make a distinction between this and Oriental plague, viz. the special implication of the lungs as shown by spitting of blood and other symptoms. Guy de Chauliac notes this feature in the earlier epidemic at Avignon, not in the later. Moreover, as this complication was a marked feature in certain epidemics of plague in India, the hypothesis has been framed by Hirsch that a. special variety of plague, pestis indica, still found in India, is that which overran the world in the 14th century. But the same symptoms (haemoptysis) have been seen, though less notably, in many plague epidemics, even in the latest, that in Russia in 1878–1879, and, moreover, according to the latest accounts, are not a special feature of Indian plague. According to a Surgeon-General Francis (Trans. Epidern. Soc. v. 398) “hemorrhage is not an ordinary accompaniment” of Indian plague, though when seen it is in the form of haemoptysis. It seems, therefore, impossible to make a special variety of Indian plague, or to refer the black death to any such special form. Gabriel de Mussis describes it even in the East, before its arrival in Europe, as a bubonic disease.
The mortality of the black death was, as is well known, enormous. It is estimated in various parts of Europe at two thirds or three-fourths of the population in the first pestilence, in England even higher; but some countries were much less severely affected. Hecker calculates that one-fourth of the population of Europe, or 25 millions of persons, died in the whole of the epidemics.
In the 15th century the plague recurred frequently in nearly all parts of Europe. In the first quarter it was very destructive in Italy, in Spain (especially Barcelona and Seville), in Germany and in England, where London was severely visited in 1400 and 1406, and again in 1428. In 1427, 80,000 persons died in Dantzic and the neighbourhood. In 1438–1339 the plague was in Germany, and its occurrence at Basel was described by Aeneas Sylvius, afterwards Pope Pius II. In 1448–1450 Italy (Kircher), Germany (Lersch, from old chronicles), France and Spain, were ravaged by a plague supposed to have arisen in Asia, scarcely less destructive than the black death. England was probably seldom quite free from plague, but the next great outbreak is recorded in 1472 and following years. In 1466, 40,000 persons died of plague in Paris; in 1477–1485 the cities of northern Italy were devastated, and in 1485 Brussels. In the fifteenth car of Henry VII. (1499–1500) a severe plague in London caused the king to retire to Calais.
The 16th century was not more free from plague than the 15th. Simultaneously with a terrible pestilence which is reported to have nearly depopulated China, plague prevailed over Germany Holland, Italy and Spain, in the first decade of the century, and revived at various times in the first half. In 1529 there was plague in Edinburgh; in London in 1537–1539, and again 1547–1548; and also in the north of England, though probably not absent before. Some of the epidemics of this period in Italy and Germany are known by the accounts of eminent physicians, as Vochs, Fracastor, Mercuria is, Borgarucci, Ingrassia, Massaria, Amici, &c.,[3] whose writings are important because the question of contagion first began to be raised, and also plague had to be distinguished from typhus fever, which began in this century to appear in Europe. The epidemic of 1563–1564 in London and England was very severe, a thousand dying weekly in London. In Paris about this time plague was an everyday occurrence, of' which some were less afraid than of a headache (Borgarucci). In 1570, 200,000 persons died in Moscow and the neighbourhood, in 1572, 50,000 at Lyons; in 1568 and 1574 plague was at Edinburgh, and in 1570 at Newcastle. When, however, in 1575 a new wave of plague passed over Europe, its origin was referred to Constantinople, whence it was said to have spread by sea to Malta, Sicily and Italy, and by land through the Austrian territories to Germany. Others contended that the disease originated locally; and, indeed, considering previous history, no importation of plague would seem necessary to explain its presence in Europe. Italy suffered severely (Venice, in 1576, lost 70,000); North Europe not less, though later; London in 1580–1582. In 1585 Breslau witnessed the most destructive plague known in its history. The great plague of 1592 in London seems to have been a part of the same epidemic, which was hardly extinguished by the end of the century, and is noted in London again in 399. On the whole, this century shows a decrease of plague Europe.
In the first half of the 17th century plague was still prevalent in Europe, though considerably less so than in the middle ages. In the second half a still greater decline is observable, and by the third quarter the disease had disappeared or was disappearing from a great part of western Europe. The epidemics in England will
be most conveniently considered in one series. From this time- ↑ See Noah Webster’s History of Epidemic Diseases, 8vo (2 vols., London, 1800) (a work which makes no pretension to medical learning, but exhibits the history of epidemics in connexion with physical disasters—as earthquakes, famines, &c.); Lersch, Kleine Pest-Chronik (8vo, 1880) (a convenient short compendium, but not always accurate); “Athanasii Kircheri Chronologia Pestium ” (to A.D. 1656), in Scrutinium pestis (Rome, 1658; Leipzig, 1671, 4to); Bascome, History of Epidemic Pestilences (London, 1851, 8vo). The most complete medical history of epidemics is Haser’s Geschichte der epidemischen Krankheiten (3rd ed., Jena, 1882), forming the third volume of his History of Medicine.
- ↑ See the original account reprinted with other documents in Haser, op. cit.; also Hecker, Epidemics of the Middle Ages, trans. by Babington, Sydenham Soc. (London, 18); Volkskrankheiten des Mittelalters, ed. Hirsch (Berlin, 1865); R. Hoeniger, Der schwarze Tod in Deutschland (Berlin, 1882).
- ↑ Vochs, Opusculum de pestilentia (1537); Fracastorius, “De Contagione, &c..” Opera (Venice, 1555); Hieron. Mercurialis, De peste, praesertim de Veneta et Patavina (Basel, 1577); Prosper Borgarutius, De peste (Venice, 1565), 8vo; Filippo Ingrassia, Informatione del pestifero morbo . . . Palermo e . . . regno di Sicilia (1575–1576, 4to, Palermo, 1576–1577); A. Massaria, De peste (Venice, 1597651 Diomedes Amicus, Tres tractatus (Venice, 1599), 4to; Victor de Bonagentibus, Decem problemata de peste (Venice, a 556), 8vo; Georgius Agricola, De peste libri tres (Basel, 1554) 8vo. he works of English physicians of this period are of little medical value; but Lodge s Treatise of the Plague (London, 1603) deserves mention.
