The epidemics of the Middle Ages / From the German tr. by B. G. Babington.

  • Justus Friedrich Carl Hecker
Date:
1859
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The epidemics of the Middle Ages / From the German tr. by B. G. Babington. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

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    account, according to which the mortal spitting of blood was met with in Germany ;J but this again is rendered suspicious, as the narrator postpones the death of those who were thus affected, to the sixth, and (even the) eighth day, whereas no other author sanctions so long a course of the disease ; and even in Strasburg, where a mitigation of the plague may, with most probability, be assumed, since in the year 1349 only 16,000 people were carried off, the generality expired by the third or fourth day.2 In Austria, and especially in Vienna, the plague was fully as malignant as any- where, so that the patients who had red spots and black boils, as well as those afflicted with tumid glands, died about the third day ;3 and lastly, very frequent sudden deaths occurred on the coasts of the North Sea and in Westphalia, without any further development of the malady.4 To France, this plague came in a northern direction from Avig- non, and was there more destructive than in Germany, so that in many places not more than two in twenty of the inhabitants sur- vived. Many were struck, as if by lightning, and died on the spot, and this more frequently among the young and strong than the old ; patients with enlarged glands in the axillce and groins scarcely survived two or three days ; and no sooner did these fatal signs appear, than they bid adieu to the world, and sought conso- lation only in the absolution which Pope Clement VI. promised them in the hour of death.3 In England the malady appeared, as at Avignon, with spitting of blood, and with the same fatality, so that the sick who were afflicted either with this symptom or with vomiting of blood, died in some cases immediately, in others within twelve hours, or at the latest, in two days. The inflammatory boils and buboes in the groins and axilke were recognised at once as prognosticating a fatal issue, and those were past all hope of recovery in whom they arose in numbers all over the body. It was not till towards and in the groins. Jac. v. Ki'migshoven, the oldest Chronicle of Alsaco and Strasburg, and indeed of all Germany. Strasburg, 1698. 4. cap. 5, § 86. p. 301. 1 Hainr. Rebdorff, Annales, Marq. Freher. Germanicarura rerum Seriptores. Francof. 1624. fol. p. 439. 2 Kbnigshoven, in loc. cit. 3 Anonym. Leobiens. Chron. I;. VI. in TTlor. Fez, Scriptor. rcr. Austriae. Lips. 1721. fol. Tom. I. p. 970. Theabove-named appearances are here called, rote sprinkel, swarcze erhiibenn und druesz under den iiehsen und zc den gemtiehten. * Ubb. Emmiie rer. Frisiacar. histor. L. XIV. p. 203. Lugd. Bat. 1616. fol. 5 Guillelmu.i da Nangis, loc. fit. • Ant. Wood, llistwria ot Antiquifates Univcrsit. Oxonicns. Oxon. 1764. fol. L. I. p. 172.
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