BLACK DEATH, The, one of the most memorable of the epidemics of the Middle Ages, was a great pestilence in the 14th cen tury, which devastated Asia, Europe and Africa. It was an Oriental plague, marked by inflamma tory boils and tumors of the glands, such as break out in no other febrile disease. On ac count of these boils, and from the black spots (indicative of putrid decomposition) which ap peared upon the skin, it has been generally called the Black Death. The symptoms were many, though all were not found in every case. Tumors and abscesses were found on the arms and thighs of those affected, and smaller boils on all parts of the body; black spots broke out on all parts of the skin, either single, united or confluent. Symptoms of cephalic affection were frequent; many patients became stupefied and fell into a deep sleep, losing also their speech from palsy of the tongue; others remained sleepless, without rest. The fauces and tongue were black, and as if suffused with blood. No beverage would assuage the burning thirst. The plague spread very rapidly as it was com municated from the sick to the healthy; con tact with the clothes or other articles which had been used by the infected induced disease, and even the breath of the sick, who expecto rated blood, caused contagion far and near. As it advanced, not only men but animals fell sick and expired. In England the plague first broke out in the county of Dorset, whence it ad vanced through the counties of Devon and Somerset to Bristol, and thence reached Glou cester, Oxford and London. Probably few places escaped, perhaps not any, for the annals of contemporaries report that throughout the land only a tenth part of the inhabitants re mained alive. From England the contagion was carried by a ship to Norway, where the plague broke out in its most frightful form, and throughout the whole country spared not one third of the population. The sailors found no refuge on their ships, and vessels whose crews had perished to the last man were often seen drifting on shore. The whole period of time during which the Black Death raged with destructive violence in Europe was (with the exception of Russia, where it did not break out until 1351) from 1347 to 1350; from this latter date to 1383 there were various pesti lences, bad enough, indeed, but not as violent as the Black Death. Ireland was much less
heavily visited than England, and the disease seems scarcely to have reached the mountain ous regions of that land; and Scotland, too, would perhaps have remained free from it had not the Scotch availed themselves of the discomfiture of the English to make an irrup tion into England, which terminated in the de struction of their army by the plague and the sword and the extension of the pestilence, through those who escaped, over the whole country. It may be assumed that Europe lost by the Black Death some 25,000,000 of people, or about one-fourth of her entire population. That her nations could recover so quickly from this terrible loss without retrograding more than they did is a most convincing proof of the indestructibility of human society as a whole. In Hungary, and afterward in Ger many, rose the brotherhood of the Flagellants, who undertook to expiate the sins of the people and avert the pestilence by self-imposed suffer ings. While the wanderings of the Flagellants threw society into confusion and helped to spread the plague, the horrors of the time were further heightened by the fearful persecutions to which the Jews were subjected, from a pop ular belief that the pestilence was owing to their poisoning the public wells. The people rose to exterminate the Hebrew race, of whom, in Mayence alone, 12,000 were cruelly murdered. They were killed by fire and by torture wher ever they could be found, and for them to the terrors of the plague were added those of a populace everywhere infuriated against them. In some places the Jewish people immolated themselves in masses; in others, not a soul of them survived the assaults of their enemies. No adequate notion can be conveyed of these horrors. To aggravate the pestilence, the poison-panic made the people shut up their wells.. With terror of poison and of plague in a state of society rude at the best, but now disorganized, whatever means were available to mitigate or prevent the sufferings of the people were rendered altogether nugatory.