184 Epidemics. 



by some short and partial experience, that the infection 

 could not be gained by the closest conversation ; and this 

 persuasion might support the assiduity of friends or physi- 

 cians in the care of the sick, whom inhuman prudence would 

 have condemned to solitude and despair. But the fatal 

 security, like the predestination of the Turks, must have 

 aided the progress of the contagion ; and those salutary pre- 

 cautions, to which Europe is indebted for her safety, were 

 unknown to the government of Justinian. No restraints 

 were imposed on the free and frequent intercourse of the 

 Roman provinces ; from Persia to France, the nations were 

 mingled and infected by wars and emigrations ; and the pes- 

 tilential odour, which lurks for years in a bale of cottn, was 

 imported, by the abuse of trade, into the most distant 

 regions. The mode of its propagation is explained by the 

 remark of Procopius himself, that it always spread from the 

 sea-coast to the inland country ; the most sequestered 

 islands and mountains were successively visited ; the places 

 which had escaped the fury of its first passage, were alone 

 exposed to the contagion of the ensuing year. The winds 

 might diffuse that subtle venom ; but, unless the atmosphere 

 be previously disposed for its reception, the plague would 

 soon expire in the cold or temperate climates of the earth. 

 Such was the universal corruption of the air, that the pesti- 

 lence, which burst forth in the fifteenth year of Justinian, 

 was not checked or alleviated by any difference of the season. 

 In time, its first malignity was abated and dispersed ; 

 the disease alternately languished and revived ; but it was 

 not till the end of a calamitous period of fifty-two years, 

 that mankind recovered their health, or the air resumed its 

 pure and salubrious quality. No facts have been preserved 

 to sustain an account, or even a conjecture, of the numbers 

 that perished in this extraordinary mortality. I only find 

 that during three months, five, and at length ten, thousand 

 persons died each day at Constantinople ; that many cities 

 of the East were left vacant, and that in several districts of 

 Italy the harvest and the vintage withered on the ground. 

 The triple scourge of war, pestilence, and famine, afflicted 

 the subjects of Justinian; and his reign is disgraced by a 

 visible decrease of the human species, which has never 

 been repaired in some of the fairest countries of the 

 globe." 



Dr. Bascombe, in his " History of Epidemics," describes 



