BUBONIC PLAGUE 93 



the lack of labourers there was a great increase in 

 wages. 



The following graphic account of the ravages of 

 this pestilence is by a writer of the period : 



"Wild places were sought for sheiter; some went into ships 

 and anchored themselves far off on the waters. But the angel 

 that was pouring the vial had a foot on the sea as well as on the 

 dry land. No place was so wild that the plague did not visit 

 none so secret that the quick-sighted pestilence did not discover 

 none could fly that it did not overtake. For a time all com- 

 merce was in coffins and shrouds, but even that ended. Shrift 

 there was none; churches and chapels were open, but neither 

 priests nor penitents entered all went to the charnel-house. 

 The sexton and the physician were cast into the same deep and 

 wide grave; the testator and his heirs and executors were hurled 

 from the same cart to the same hole together. Fire became ex- 

 tinguished, as if its element had expired, and the seams of the 

 sailorless ships yawned to the sun. Though doors were open 

 and coffers unwatched, there was no theft; all offences ceased, and 

 no cry but the universal woe of the pestilence was heard among 

 men." 



That the " black death" of the fourteenth century 

 was in fact the same disease which subsequently pre- 

 vailed in Europe under the name of " the plague," 

 and more recently known as " bubonic plague," can 

 scarcely be doubted. But the epidemic was character- 

 ised by an unusually large number of cases of the 

 pulmonary form of the disease, in which it seems 

 probable that the lungs are the primary seat of infec- 

 tion, while in the bubonic form the bacillus effects a 



