Epidemics. 165 



Paulus ^Egineta, is dead against it. He says : " We may 

 mention that, after having read, we may say, every word of 

 every ancient writer on medicine that has come down to us, 

 we can confidently affirm that the Greeks and Romans are 

 altogether silent on the subject, and that we are indebted 

 to the Arabians for the earliest accounts which we have of 

 these diseases (small-pox and measles)."* 



The earliest data we have of it is in a MS. at the 

 University of Leyden, which gives the year 572, but how 

 much earlier there are no certain means of determining. It 

 was in Italy 614 ; and Spain 714, three years after the 

 Saracens established themselves at Cordova, and conquered 

 part of Spain. How it first reached Rome there is nothing 

 of a decided character, but its being in Spain in 714 is 

 directly traceable to Saracenic invasion. The conquerors 

 brought the disease with them. 



From these two dates, 614 and 714, till 1174, the historian 

 has no certain grounds for speaking upon the plague of 

 small-pox as having any regions beyond Italy and Spain, 

 where this disease had spread itself. 



The origin of the epidemic in Spain is apparent enough, 

 because its spread would be coeval with its introduction by 

 the Saracens, the same people amongst whom it first 

 appeared in the sixth century. But it does not appear 

 to have settled in France at that time ; the southern 

 mountain barriers of the Apennines, the Pyrenees, and the 

 Alpine ranges gave small-pox its geographical boundary in 

 Europe. But in the next period, from 1177 to 1817, it fre- 

 quently scourged the entire of Europe, selecting at one 

 time one country and then another, and at times the whole 

 of Europe simultaneously, as in 1436. 



So of the true Levant plague; it appeared between 543 and 



* Paulus yEgineta, Vol. I., page 330. Sydenham Society's Edition. 



