The Black Death and The Dancing Mania | Page 9

the support of modern
experience, provided it could be proved that this plague had been
actually imported from the East, or that the Oriental plague in general,
whenever it appears in Europe, has its origin in Asia or Egypt. Such a
proof, however, can by no means be produced so as to enforce
conviction; for it would involve the impossible assumption, either that
there is no essential difference between the degree of civilisation of the
European nations, in the most ancient and in modern times, or that
detrimental circumstances, which have yielded only to the civilisation
of human society and the regular cultivation of countries, could not
formerly keep up the glandular plague.
The plague was, however, known in Europe before nations were united
by the bonds of commerce and social intercourse; hence there is ground
for supposing that it sprang up spontaneously, in consequence of the
rude manner of living and the uncultivated state of the earth, influences
which peculiarly favour the origin of severe diseases. Now we need not
go back to the earlier centuries, for the fourteenth itself, before it had
half expired, was visited by five or six pestilences.
If, therefore, we consider the peculiar property of the plague, that in
countries which it has once visited it remains for a long time in a milder

form, and that the epidemic influences of 1342, when it had appeared
for the last time, were particularly favourable to its unperceived
continuance, till 1348, we come to the notion that in this eventful year
also the germs of plague existed in Southern Europe, which might be
vivified by atmospherical deteriorations; and that thus, at least in part,
the Black Plague may have originated in Europe itself. The corruption
of the atmosphere came from the East; but the disease itself came not
upon the wings of the wind, but was only excited and increased by the
atmosphere where it had previously existed.
This source of the Black Plague was not, however, the only one; for far
more powerful than the excitement of the latent elements of the plague
by atmospheric influences was the effect of the contagion
communicated from one people to another on the great roads and in the
harbours of the Mediterranean. From China the route of the caravans
lay to the north of the Caspian Sea, through Central Asia, to Tauris.
Here ships were ready to take the produce of the East to Constantinople,
the capital of commerce, and the medium of connection between Asia,
Europe, and Africa. Other caravans went from India to Asia Minor, and
touched at the cities south of the Caspian Sea, and, lastly, from Bagdad
through Arabia to Egypt; also the maritime communication on the Red
Sea, from India to Arabia and Egypt, was not inconsiderable. In all
these directions contagion made its way; and, doubtless, Constantinople
and the harbours of Asia Minor are to be regarded as the foci of
infection, whence it radiated to the most distant seaports and islands.
To Constantinople the plague had been brought from the northern coast
of the Black Sea, after it had depopulated the countries between those
routes of commerce, and appeared as early as 1347 in Cyprus, Sicily,
Marseilles, and some of the seaports of Italy. The remaining islands of
the Mediterranean, particularly Sardinia, Corsica, and Majorca, were
visited in succession. Foci of contagion existed also in full activity
along the whole southern coast of Europe; when, in January, 1348, the
plague appeared in Avignon, and in other cities in the south of France
and north of Italy, as well as in Spain.
The precise days of its eruption in the individual towns are no longer to

be ascertained; but it was not simultaneous; for in Florence the disease
appeared in the beginning of April, in Cesena the 1st June, and place
after place was attacked throughout the whole year; so that the plague,
after it had passed through the whole of France and Germany--where,
however, it did not make its ravages until the following year--did not
break out till August in England, where it advanced so gradually, that a
period of three months elapsed before it reached London. The northern
kingdoms were attacked by it in 1349; Sweden, indeed, not until
November of that year, almost two years after its eruption in Avignon.
Poland received the plague in 1349, probably from Germany, if not
from the northern countries; but in Russia it did not make its
appearance until 1351, more than three years after it had broken out in
Constantinople. Instead of advancing in a north-westerly direction from
Tauris and from the Caspian Sea, it had thus made the great circuit of
the Black Sea, by way of Constantinople, Southern and Central Europe,
England, the northern kingdoms, and Poland, before it reached the
Russian