The Black Death and The Dancing Mania | Page 4

Austria, and especially
in Vienna, the plague was fully as malignant as anywhere, so that the
patients who had red spots and black boils, as well as those afflicted
with tumid glands, died about the third day; and lastly, very frequent
sudden deaths occurred on the coasts of the North Sea and in
Westphalia, without any further development of the malady.

To France, this plague came in a northern direction from Avignon, and
was there more destructive than in Germany, so that in many places not
more than two in twenty of the inhabitants survived. 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
axillae and groins scarcely survive two or three days; and no sooner did
these fatal signs appear, than they bid adieu to the world, and sought
consolation only in the absolution which Pope Clement VI. promised
them in the hour of death.
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 two days.
The inflammatory boils and buboes in the groins and axillae 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 the close of the plague that they ventured to open,
by incision, these hard and dry boils, when matter flowed from them in
small quantity, and thus, by compelling nature to a critical suppuration,
many patients were saved. Every spot which the sick had touched, their
breath, their clothes, spread the contagion; and, as in all other places,
the attendants and friends who were either blind to their danger, or
heroically despised it, fell a sacrifice to their sympathy. Even the eyes
of the patient were considered a sources of contagion, which had the
power of acting at a distance, whether on account of their unwonted
lustre, or the distortion which they always suffer in plague, or whether
in conformity with an ancient notion, according to which the sight was
considered as the bearer of a demoniacal enchantment. Flight from
infected cities seldom availed the fearful, for the germ of the disease
adhered to them, and they fell sick, remote from assistance, in the
solitude of their country houses.
Thus did the plague spread over England with unexampled rapidity,
after it had first broken out in the county of Dorset, whence it advanced
through the counties of Devon and Somerset, to Bristol, and thence
reached Gloucester, Oxford and London. Probably few places escaped,

perhaps not any; for the annuals of contemporaries report that
throughout the land only a tenth part of the inhabitants remained alive.
From England the contagion was carried by a ship to Bergen, the
capital of Norway, where the plague then broke out in its most frightful
form, with vomiting of blood; and throughout the whole country,
spared not more than a third of the inhabitants. The sailors found no
refuge in their ships; and vessels were often seen driving about on the
ocean and drifting on shore, whose crews had perished to the last man.
In Poland the affected were attacked with spitting blood, and died in a
few days in such vast numbers, that, as it has been affirmed, scarcely a
fourth of the inhabitants were left.
Finally, in Russia the plague appeared two years later than in Southern
Europe; yet here again, with the same symptoms as elsewhere. Russian
contemporaries have recorded that it began with rigor, heat, and darting
pain in the shoulders and back; that it was accompanied by spitting of
blood, and terminated fatally in two, or at most three days. It is not till
the year 1360 that we find buboes mentioned as occurring in the neck,
in the axillae, and in the groins, which are stated to have broken out
when the spitting of blood had continued some time. According to the
experience of Western Europe, however, it cannot be assumed that
these symptoms did not appear at an earlier period.
Thus much, from authentic sources, on the nature of the Black Death.
The descriptions which have been communicated contain, with a few
unimportant exceptions, all the symptoms of the oriental plague which
have been observed in more modern times. No doubt can obtain on this
point. The facts are placed clearly before our eyes. We must, however,
bear in mind that this violent disease does not always appear in the
same form, and that while the essence of the poison which it