SLACK DEATH was one of the names given to an oriental plague marked by inflammatory boils and tumors, which in the 14th es desolated the world. It took this name from the black spots, symptomatic of a putrid decomposition, which, at one of its stages, appeared upon the skin.
Our information as to the symptoms and course of this terrible malady is far from perfect. So much is clear, that they varied somewhat from case to case, and in differ ent countries, and greatly changed towards the close of the period of its ravages Europe (1348-51). Amoug them may be noticed great impostInimes on the thighs and arms—what are called buboes—and smaller boils on the arms and face; in many cases, black spots all over the body; and in some, affection of the head, stupor, and palsy of the tongue, which became black as if suffused with blood; burning and unsinkable thirst; putrid inflammation of the lungs, attended by acute pains in the chest, the expec toration of blood, and a fetid pestiferous breath. On the first appearance of the plague in Europe, fever, the evacuation of blood,' and carbuncular affection of the lungs brought death before the other symptoms could be developed; afterwards, boils and buboes characterized its fatal course in Europe as in the east. In almost all cases its victims perished in two or three days after being attacked. Its spots and tumors were the seals of a doom which medicine had no power to avert, and which in despair many anticipated by self-slaughter.
If the symptoms of the 13. D. have been only imperfectly handed down to us, the his tory of its rise and progress is still more obscure. But while fable enters largely into its history, it would seem to be safe to assign its birthplace to China; and there is a strong concurrence of testimony, that the causes which co-operate to produced it are to be sought for as fur back as 1:383-15 years before its outbreak in Europe—in a series of great con vulsions of the earth's structure, which commenced in that year, and which, for 26 years thereafter, continued powerfully to affect the conditions of ,animal and life. The precise date of the appearance of the plague in China is unknown, but from 1833 till 1348, that great country suffered a terrible mortality from droughts, famines, floods, earthquakes which swallowed mountains, and swarms of, innumerable locusts; and in the last few years of that period, from the plague. During the same lirne Europe mani fested sympathy with the changes which affected tlie east. 'rho order of the seasons seemed at various times to be inverted; storms of thunder and lightning were frequent in the dead of winter, and there occurred great earthquakes 'and eruptions of Volcanoes conceived to have become extinct. The theory is, that I hisgreat tellurian activity, accom
panied by the decomposition of organic masses, myriads of bodies of men, brutes, and locusts, produced some change in the atmosphere unfavorable to life; and some writers, speaking of the established progress of the plague from east to west, say that the impure air was actually visible, as it approached with its burden of death. " A dense and awful fog was seen in the heavens, rising in the cast, and descending upon Italy" (,ilanield Chronicle in Cgriac Spangenberg, chap. 287, fol. 836). With this view of the plague is to be conjoined another regardiug the causes which produced a predisposition of the inhabitants of Europe to become its victims, and which are referred to the effects on the popular health partly of scarcity and partly'of the prevalent bad habits of living. There is much probability in the theory. that the plague was Owing to an to mospheric poison acting on the organs of respiration. which, it v111 be recollected, were always those first attacked. But while impurity of the air and the state of the public health may have largely contributed to the mortality, it may be doubted whether the disease did not owe its extension almost wholly to infection and contagion, whatever causes may have originally produced it. It appears that the pestilence had in a milder form appeared in Europe in 1342, but it had passed away. and there is little reason for holding that, in the interval. it remained merely latent. 'The invasion of 1348 may actually be tracked from Chin:tin its advance by the various caravan routes towards the west. northern coast of the Black sea sent the plague by contagion to Constantinople. By contagion it reached the seaports of Italy, and thence, as from so n.any foci of contagion, it soon established itself over Europe. Its advance may be traced through Germany and France to England, from which it WAR. transmitted to Sweden. It was three years from its appearance at Constantinople, before it crept, by a great circle. to the Russian territories. This fact of its spread by contagion has ltd to speculations as to whether,. by rigid rules of quarantine. it might not have been excluded from Europe. Such rules arc: now at many points in force as securities against oriental plagues.