1 88 Epidemics. 



April ;* in Cesena, the ist of June ;t and place after place 

 was attacked throughout the whole year, so that the plague, 

 after it had passed through the whole of France and 

 Germany, where, however, it did not make its ravages until 

 the following year, did not break out till August in England ; 

 where it advanced so gradually, that a period of three months 

 elapsed before it reached London.! The Northern King- 

 doms were attacked by it in 1349 Sweden, indeed, not 

 until November of that year; almost two years after its 

 eruption in Avignon. Poland received the plague in 1349, 

 probably from Germany, || if not from the northern countries ; 

 but in Russia, it did not make its appearance until 1351, 

 more than three years after it had broken out in Constanti- 

 nople. Instead of advancing in a north-westerly direction 

 from Tauris and from the Caspian Sea, it had thus made the 

 great circuit of the Black Sea, by way of Constantinople, 

 Southern and Central Europe, England, the Northern 

 Kingdoms and Poland, before it reached the Russian 

 territories ; a phenomenon which has not again occurred 

 with respect to more recent pestilences originating in Asia. 



" Whether any difference existed between the indigenous 

 plague, excited by the influence of the atmosphere, and that 

 which was imported by contagion, can no longer be ascer- 

 tained from the facts ; for the contemporaries, who in 

 .general were not competent to make accurate researches 

 of this kind, have left no data on the subject. A milder and 

 a more malignant form certainly existed, and the former was 

 not always derived from the latter, as is to be supposed from 

 this circumstance that the spitting of blood, the infallible 

 diagnostic of the latter, on the first breaking out of the 

 plague, is not similarly mentioned in all the reports ; and it 

 is therefore probable, that the milder form belonged to the 

 native plague the more malignant, to that introduced by 

 contagion. Contagion was, however, in itself, only one of 

 many causes which gave rise to the Black plague. 



" This disease was a consequence of violent commotions 

 in the earth's organism if any disease of cosmical origin 

 can be so considered. One spring set a thousand others in 



* Matt. Villani, Istorie, in Muratori, T. XIV., p. 14. 

 \ Annal. Caesenat., Ibid., p. 1179. 

 I Barnes, Loc. cit. 



Olof Dalin's, " Svea-Rikes Historic," III. vol., Stockholm, 1747 61, 

 4. Vol. II., C. 12, p. 496. 



|| Dlugoss, " Histor. Polon.," L. IX., p. 1086, T. I. Lips., 1711, fol. 



