The epidemics of the Middle Ages / from the German of J.F.C. Hecker ; tr. by B.G. Babington.

  • Hecker, J. F. C. (Justus Friedrich Carl), 1795-1850.
Date:
1844
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The epidemics of the Middle Ages / from the German of J.F.C. Hecker ; tr. by B.G. Babington. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

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    noxious vapours ; and as at that time natural occurrences were transformed into miracles, it was reported, that a fiery meteor, which descended on the earth far in the East, had destroyed every- thing within a circumference of more than a hundred leagues, infecting the air far and wide.' The consequences of innumerable floods contributed to the same effect; vast river districts had been converted into swamps ; foul vapours arose everywhere, increased by the odour of putrified locusts, which had never perhaps darkened the sun in thicker swarms,^ and of countless corpses, which, even in the well-regulated countries of Europe, they knew not how to remove quickly enough out of the sight of the living. It is probable, therefore, that the atmosphere contained foreign, and sensibly perceptible, admixtures to a great extent, which, at least in the lower regions, could not be decomposed, or rendered ineffect- ive by separation. Now, if we go back to the symptoms of the disease, the ardent inflammation of the lungs points out that the organs of respiration yielded to the attack of an atmospheric poison—a poison, which, if we admit the independent origin of the Black Plague at any one place on the globe, which, under such extraordinary circum- stances, it would be difiicult to doubt, attacked the course of the circulation in as hostile a manner as that which produces inflam- mation of the spleen, and other animal contagions that cause swelling and inflammation of the lymphatic glands. Pursuing the course of these grand revolutions further, we find notice of an unexampled earthquake, which, on the 25th of Januar}'-, 1348, shook Greece, Italy, and the neighbouring coun- tries. Naples, Rome, Pisa, Bologna, Padua, Venice, and many other cities suffered considerably : whole villages were swallowed up. Castles, houses, and churches were overthrown, and hundreds of people were buried beneath their ruins.^ In Carinthia, thirty villages, together with all the churches, were demolished ; more than a thousand corpses were drawn out of the rubbish ; the city of Yillach was so completely destroyed, that very few of its in- habitants were saved ; and when the earth ceased to tremble, it M'as found that mountains had been moved from their positions, ' Mezeray, Histoire de France, Tom. II. 418. Paris, 1685. Compare Oudegheerst's Chroniques de Flandres. Antwerp, 1571, 4to. Chap. 175, f. 297. - They spread in a direction from East to West, over most of the countries from which we have received intelligence. Anonym. Leobiens, Chron. loc. cit. ' Giov. Villani Istorie Florentine, L. XII. chap. 121, 122. in Muratori, T. XIII. pp. 1001, 1002. Compare Barnes, loc. cit. p. 430.