History of Animal Plagues. 103 



remarks Hecker^that other epizootics among animals likewise took 

 place, although the ignorant writers of the 14th century are silent 

 on this point.^ 'Thus did the plague spread over England with un- 

 exampled rapidity after it had first broken out in the county of 

 Dorset, whence it advanced through the counties of Devon 

 and Somerset to Bristol, and thence reached Gloucester, Oxford, 

 and London. Probably few places escaped, perhaps not any, 

 for the annals of contemporaries report that throughout the 



land only a tenth part of the inhabitants remained alive 



Ireland was much less heavily visited than England. The dis- 

 ease seems to have scarcely reached the mountainous districts 

 of that kingdom. And Scotland, too, would perhaps have re- 

 mained free, had not the Scots av^ailed themselves of the dis- 

 comfiture of the English to make an irruption into their terri- 

 tory, which terminated in the destruction of their army by the 

 plague and by the sword, and the extension of the pestilence, 

 through those who had escaped, over the whole country. At 

 the commencement, there was in England a superabundance of all 

 the necessaries of life ; but the plague, which seemed then to be 

 the sole disease, was accompanied by a fatal murrain among the 

 cattle. Wandering about without their herdsmen, they fell by 

 thousands; and, as has likewise been observed in Africa, the 

 birds and beasts of prey arc said not to have touched them. Of 

 what nature this murrain may have been, can no more be deter- 

 mined than whether it originated from communication with 

 plague patients or from other causes; but thus much is certain, 

 that it did not break out until after the commencement of the 

 Black Death.^ 



In consequence of this murrain, and the impossibility of 



1 Hecker. The knowledge of contagion, especially as applied to an under- 

 standing of the diffusion of pestilential maladies, seems in the Middle Ages to have 

 been very exact and comprehensive. Hecker, in treating of this Black Plague of the 

 14th century, incidentally speaks of Gcntilis of Foligno, a celebrated physician, who 

 fell a victim to that disease while attending to the sick. He says of him : ' He 

 believed in a progressive infection from country to country, according to the notions 

 of the present day ; and the contagious power of the disease, even in the vicinity 

 of those affected by the plague, was, in his opinion, beyond all doubt {vciiaiosa 

 piUredo circa partes cordis et pulmonis dc qiiibtis excmite vencnoso vaporc, pcnctilum 

 est in vicinitatibus). On this point intelligent contemporaries were all agreed.' — 

 The Epidemics of the Middle Ages. 



