1 8 o Epidemics . 



ancients, as they were cotemporaries in their time of 

 appearance in Arabia, they were supposed (as Rhases and 

 other Arabian physicians) to be different modifications of one 

 general disease ; but the duration of one or the other is so 

 distinct that their mutual check upon each other is but for 

 a short season, the variola occupying the same parts of the 

 body when measles has disappeared as were occupied 

 previously by that disease. Hence the check is merely a 

 repression for a season, and does not appear to modify, 

 hasten, or shorten the variola a single day. 



When only one case of combined measles and small-pox 

 has been seen it is not prudent to say much respecting it, but 

 in giving an opinion, one thing only can be mentioned 

 with certainty namely, that the duration of the variola so 

 far exceeding that of measles, it does not appear from its 

 very nature to be so adapted to check and limit the other 

 as diseases whose duration are much nearer to each other 

 in running their course. 



But in the Black death a very different tale must be told 

 to that of measles and scarlatina together, or either of these 

 with varicella. 



Black death came apparently by way of China, according 

 to Hecker, and thence by Persia to Asia Minor, and to 

 Europe in 1348. Bascome gives it an African origin, and 

 then to Asia ; and Rapin, with his annotator, Tyndal, give it 

 a Tartar origin, and from Cathay, in Asia, on to Constanti- 

 nople and Europe. Its spread all over Asia, Europe, and 

 Africa was more rapid and destructive than any pestilence 

 before or since. 



It was, in all respects, the Levant plague, first described 

 by Procopius, save one, and that one was the lung affection 

 characterized by laborious respiration, much cough, and 

 finally bloody expectoration, the sure sign of a fatal end,, 

 soon to be followed by haemorrhage and death. 



