ON THE PRICE OF LABOUR. 393 



to be accounted for by the fact that the weakest members of the 

 community naturally succumbed the first, for just as was often 

 the case with the first incidence of the Asiatic cholera, many of 

 those who were attacked were instantly struck down; some 

 even perished suddenly, and before the disease had developed 

 any of its peculiar symptoms. 



The disease still exists under the name of the Levant or 

 Oriental Plague, and is endemic in Asia Minor, in parts of 

 Turkey, and in Egypt. It is specifically a disease in which the 

 blood is poisoned, in which the system seeks to relieve itself by 

 suppuration of the glands, and in which, the tissues becoming 

 disorganized, and the blood thereupon being infiltrated into 

 them, dark blotches appear on the skin. Hence the earliest 

 name by which the Plague was described. 



The storm burst on the Island of Cyprus at the end of the 

 year 1347, and was accompanied, we are told, by remarkable 

 physical phenomena, as convulsions of the earth, and a total 

 change in the atmosphere. Many persons affected died in- \J 

 stantly. The Black Death seemed, not only to the frightened 

 imagination of the people, but even to the more sober obser- 

 vation of the few men of science of the time, to move forward 

 with measured steps from the desolated East, under the form 

 of a dark and fetid mist. It is very likely that consequent 

 upon the great physical convulsions which had rent the earth 

 and preceded the disease, foreign substances of a deleterious 

 character had been projected into the atmosphere, had per- 

 manently infected its lower regions, and could not, by the 

 ordinary powers of dispersion possessed by the air, be easily 

 eliminated or neutralized. We are informed, as part of a 

 physical theory which may account for the prevalence of bron- 

 chitis accompanied by severe depression of the vital powers, 

 that such a state may be induced accidentally by inhaling 

 very small quantities of the vapour of selenium, and if this 

 substance, a product of volcanic action, were dispersed in 

 the air, that there might be, probably is, a general affection 

 of all who are subject to its influences. Hereafter, perhaps, 



