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

  • Justus Friedrich Carl Hecker
Date:
1846
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

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

    35/454 (page 5)
    Florence, the seat of the revival of science, gives a more lively description of the attack of the disease than his non-medical contemporaries *. It commenced here, not as in the East, with bleeding at the nose, a sure sign of inevitable death; but there took place at the beginning, both in men and women, tumours in the groin and in the axilla, varying in circumference up to the size of an apple or an egg, and called by the people, pest-boils (gavoc- cio). ‘Then there appeared similar tumours indiscriminately over all parts of the body, and black or blue spots came out on the arms or thighs, or on other parts, either single and large, or small and thickly studded. These spots proved equally fatal with the pest-boils, which had been from the first regarded as a sure sign of death>. No power of medicine brought relief—al- most all died within the first three days, some sooner, some later, after the appearance of these signs, and for the most part entirely without fever® or other symptoms. The plague spread itself with the greater fury, as it communicated from the 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 animals, fell victims to the contagion?; and it is to be presumed that other epizootes among animals likewise took place, although the ignorant writers of the fourteenth century are silent on this point. In Germany there was a repetition in every respect of the same phenomena. The infallible signs of the oriental bubo- plague with its inevitable contagion were found there as every- where else; but the mortality was not nearly so great as in the * Decameron. Giorn. I. Introd. > From this period black petechize have always been considered as fatal in the plague. ¢ A very usual circumstance in plague epidemics. 4 Auger. de Biterris, Vite Romanor. pontificum, Muratort Scriptor. rer. Italic. Vol. HE Pt. Uy p. 506.