The Black Death in the fourteenth century / from the German of I.F.C. Hecker ; tr. by B.G. Babington.

  • Hecker, J. F. C. (Justus Friedrich Carl), 1795-1850.
Date:
1833
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The Black Death in the fourteenth century / from the German of I.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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    ]2 sick to the healthy, like fire among dry and oily fuel, and even contact with the clothes and other articles which had been used by the infected, seemed to induce the disease. As it advanced, not only men, but animals fell sick and shortly expired, if they had touched things belonging to the diseased or dead. Thus Boccacio himself saw two hogs on the rags of a person who had died of plague, after staggering about for a short time, fall down dead, as if they had taken poison. In other places, mul- titudes of dogs, cats, fowls and other ani- mals, fell victims to the contagion;* and it is to be presumed that other epizootes among animals likewise took place, al- though the ignorant writers of the four- teenth century are silent on this point. In Germany there was a repetition in every respect of the same phenomena. The * Auger de Biterris, Vitae Romanor. pontifieum, Muratori Scriptor. rer. Italic. Vol. III. Pt. II. p. 556.