586 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



in 1630, the deaths from all diseases are said to have amounted 

 to 186,000. The Milan outbreak has been graphically described by 

 Manzoni, in his celebrated 'I Promessi Sposi/ Unrecognized, the dis- 

 ease entered Milan in October, 1629. The mild cases which were met 

 with during the winter months lulled the fears of the people and en- 

 couraged the mass of physicians to deny the existence of the plague. 

 But in April the disease began to assert itself in terrible earnest. The 

 frenzied populace, blind to the contagiousness of the disease, were pos- 

 sessed with the strange hallucination that obtained during former 

 plague epidemics in other Italian cities, that the pest spread because of 

 poison scattered about by evil-minded persons. Suspicious strangers 

 were, as a result, stoned in the streets, imprisoned and even put to 

 death by legal process because of such fanatical beliefs. To offset the 

 growing pestilence, the people demanded of the Archbishop that a 

 solemn religious procession be held, and that the holy relics of Saint 

 Charles be exposed. At first this was refused, but eventually it was 

 granted. The procession bearing the saintly body was solemnly held 

 on the 11th of June. The fanatical security which these devotions 

 engendered was rudely shattered when, a few days later, the disease 

 burst forth with renewed activity among all classes in all parts of the 

 city. Nevertheless, as Manzoni observes, the faith was such that none 

 recognized that the procession itself was directly the cause of the new 

 outburst of the disease by facilitating the spread of the contagion. 

 Again the belief asserted itself that the 'untori,' or poisoners, mixed with 

 the crowd and with their unguents and powders had infected as many as 

 possible. From that day the fury of the contagion continued to grow to 

 such an extent that scarcely a house remained exempt from the disease. 

 The number of patients in the pesthouse rose from 2,000 to 12,000, 

 and later reached 17,000. The daily mortality rose from 500 to 1,200, 

 then 1,500, and is even said to have reached 3,500. Milan, before the 

 epidemic, was said to have had a population of from 200,000 to 250,000. 

 The loss by death has been variously estimated at from 140,000 to 

 186,000. All these deaths were not due to the plague. Thus, large 

 numbers of children died as a result of starvation consequent upon the 

 death of their parents from the plague. 



The horrors attendant upon such a dreadful visitation can well be 

 imagined. Scarcity of help in removing the dead and in taking care 

 of the sick made itself felt, to say nothing of the lack of food. Enor- 

 mous trenches, one after another, were filled with the bodies of the 

 victims, carried thither by the hardened monatti, the counterpart of the 

 Florentine hecchini, so well portrayed by Lord Lytton in his 'Rienzi.' 

 These bearers of the sick and dead "were naturally recruited from the 

 lowest criminal classes, and it can, therefore, cause but little wonder that 



