1 86 Epidemics. 



immediate contact, and only under unfavourable circum- 

 stances of rare occurrence is communicated by the mere 

 approach to the sick. The share which this cause had in 

 the spreading of the plague over the whole earth was cer- 

 tainly very great ; and the opinion that the Black death 

 might have been excluded from Western Europe by good 

 regulations, similar to those which are now in use, would 

 have all the support of modern experience, provided it could 

 be proved that this plague had been actually imported from 

 the East, or that the Oriental plague in general, as often as 

 it appears in Europe, always has its origin in Asia or Egypt. 

 Such a proof, however, cannot be produced so as to enforce 

 conviction ; for it would involve the impossible assumption 

 that either there is no essential difference in the degree of 

 civilization of the European nations, in the most ancient 

 and modern times, or that detrimental circumstances, which 

 have yielded only to the civilization of human society and 

 the regular cultivation of countries, could not formerly have 

 maintained the bubo plague. 



" The plague was, however, known in Europe before 

 nations were united by the bonds of commerce and social 

 intercourse ;* hence there is ground for supposing that it 

 sprung up spontaneously, in consequence of the rude 

 manner of living and the uncultivated state of the earth 

 influences which peculiarly favour the origin of severe diseases. 

 Now, we need not go back to the earlier centuries, for 

 the I4th itself, before it was half expired, was visited by 

 five or six pestilences. t 



" If, therefore, we consider the peculiar property of the 

 plague that, in countries which it has once visited, it re- 

 mains for a long time in a milder form, and that the epidemic 

 influences of 1342, when it had appeared for the last time, 

 were particularly favourable to its unperceived continuance 

 till 1348, we come to the notion that in this eventful year, 



* According to Papon, its origin is quite lost in the obscurity of 

 remote ages ; and even before the Christian era we are able to trace 

 many references to former pestilences. " De la peste, ou epoques 

 memorables de ce fleau. et les moyens de s'en preserver." T. II., 

 Paris, An. VIII. de la rep. 8. 



f 1301, in the south of France; 1311, in Italy; 1316, in Italy, Bur- 

 gundy, and Northern Europe ; 1335, the locust years, in the middle of 

 Europe; 1340, in Upper Italy; 1342, in France; and 1347, in Mar- 

 seilles and most of the larger islands of the Mediterranean. Ibid., 

 T. II., p. 273. 



