460 ON THE PRICE OF MATERIALS 



If, however, the suggestion made above seems feasible, and 

 we may conclude that there is some reason in connecting 

 high and low prices of salt with murky weather and sunshine 

 respectively, we shall be able to make use of this guide with 

 greater security after the Plague than before, since the cost of 

 carriage comes to less in the aggregate sum. In this way I 

 should gather that 1350-1352, 1355-1356? 1365-1374, were, on 

 the whole, wet years, or at least such seasons as those in which 

 the manufacture would be seriously impeded by inopportune or 

 unsatisfactory weather. In the latter part of the period the 

 price declines, and from causes similar, no doubt, to those which 

 produced low prices a century before, the rate occasionally falls 

 very low when compared with those which had ruled for thirty 

 years after the Plague. 



SHEEP MEDICINES. At about the beginning of the last 

 twenty years of the thirteenth century sheep, it seems, were 

 first affected with scab. The earliest notice which the 

 accounts supply of this disease is in 1288, but we can trace 

 the fact as early at least as 1283, from the purchases made 

 of medicaments for external application. It was not known, 

 I think, in Walter de Henley's time, for he makes no mention 

 of the disease ; and as he dwells in such detail on the symptoms, 

 the preventives of the complaint, and the remedies (if indeed 

 there were any) for the rot or entozm in the viscera of 

 sheep, we can hardly doubt that he would have commented 

 on the scab had it come before his notice, since the effect 

 on the economy of sheep-farming is even more serious when 

 this disease breaks out than it is when the former is prevalent. 

 From that time, whatever was the precise date in which the dis- 

 ease made its first appearance, it has been endemic, though now, 

 I suppose, more care has rendered its incidence less serious. 



As I have stated, the earliest treatment was by medicaments. 

 Of these, the most important were copperas, verdigris, and 

 mercury. It is probable, too, that external dressings were 

 purchased ready-made, for it is only in this way that I can 

 account for the occasional high price of c unguentum.' So 



