148 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



history of former times. The Hack -death that ravaged Asia and 

 Southern Europe in the fourteenth century spared the Mohammedan 

 countries— Persia, Turkistan, Morocco, and Southern Spain— whose in- 

 habitants generally abstained from pork and intoxicating drinks. In 

 the Byzantine Empire, Russia, Germany, France, Northern Spain (in- 

 habited by the Christian Visigoths), and Italy, 4,000,000 died be- 

 tween 1373 and 1375, but the monasteries of the stricter orders and the 

 frugal peasants of Calabria and Sicily enjoyed their usual health (which 

 they of course, ascribed to the favor of their tutelar saints) ; but among 

 the cities which suffered most were Barcelona, Lyons, Florence, and 

 Moscow, the first three situated on rocky mountain-slopes, with no lack 

 of drainage and pure water, while the steppes of the Upper Volga are 

 o-enerally dry and salubrious. 



The pestilence of 1720 swept away 52,000, or more than two-thirds 

 of the 75 000 inhabitants of Marseilles, in less than five weeks ; but of 

 the 6,000 abstemious Spaniards that inhabited the " Suburb of the 

 Catalans "only 200 died, or less than four per cent. The most de- 

 structive epidemic recorded in authentic history was the four years 

 plao-ue that commenced in A. d. 542 and raged through the dominions 

 of Chosroes the Great, the Byzantine Empire, Northern Africa, and 

 Southwestern Europe. It commenced in Egypt, spread to the east 

 over Syria, Persia, and the Indies, and penetrated to the west along 

 the coast of Africa and over the Continent of Europe. Asia Minor, 

 with its plethoric cities, Constantinople, Northern Italy, and France 

 suffered fearfully; entire provinces were abandoned, cities died out and 

 remained vacant for many years, and during three months 5 000 and at 

 last 10 000 persons died at Constantinople each day! (Gibbon s His- 

 tory " vol. iii., chap, xliii.) ; and the total number of victims m the three 

 continents is variously estimated from 75,000,000 to 120,000,000 (Pro- 

 copius, « Anecdot.," cap. xviii. ; Cousin's " Hist.," tome u., p. 178). But 

 in Sicily, Morocco, and Albania, the disease was confined to a few sea- 

 port towns, and the Caucasus and Arabia escaped entirely. 



This dreadful plague made its first appearance in Alexandria, Egypt, 

 then a luxurious city of 800,000 inhabitants, and Paulus Diaconus a 

 contemporary historian, speaks of the "reckless gluttony by which the 

 inhabitants of the great capital incurred yearly fevers and dangerous 

 indigestions ; and at last brought this terrible judgment upon them- 

 selves and their innocent neighbors " (lib. ii., cap. iv.). Alexandria 

 lost half a million of her inhabitants in 542, and 80,000 in the following 

 year, and for miles around the city the fields were covered with unburied 

 corpses ; but the monks of the Nitrian Desert (3,000 of them had de- 

 voted themselves to the task of collecting and burying the dead) lost 

 only fifty of their fraternity, who with few exceptions confessed that 

 they had secretly violated the ascetic rules of their order. 



If the thirteen centuries since that year of judgment had been em- 

 ployed in the study of physiology and hygiene rather than m Trinita- 



