1 18 PLA G UE-STR UCK ANIMALS 



they had touched things belonging to the diseased or 

 dead.' Boccaccio himself saw two hogs on the rags of 

 a person who had died of plague, after staggering about 

 for a short time, fall down dead as if they had taken 

 poison. In the ' Lives of the Roman Pontiffs ' it is 

 stated that in other places multitudes of cats, dogs, 

 fowls and other animals fell victims to the contagion. 

 There is little doubt that this concurrence of human 

 and animal death took place in other countries than 

 Italy, though the chroniclers, appalled by the loss of 

 human life, only allude to l murrain ' among the cattle 

 as a concomitant of the plague. 'At the commence- 

 ment of the Black Death there was in England/ says 

 Keeker, 5 * 'an abundance of all the necessaries of life; 

 but the plague, which seemed then to be the sole 

 disease, was soon accompanied by a fatal murrain 

 among the cattle. Wandering about without herds- 

 men, they fell by thousands.' It is not known whether 

 this murrain was due to plague itself or to some special 

 animal epidemic. But it did not break out until after 

 the plague was rife, and added enormously to the loss 

 of life, because it was impossible to remove the corn 

 from the fields, this causing everywhere a great rise in 

 the price of food, although the harvest had been 

 plentiful. Whether it affected wild beasts as well as 

 domesticated animals does not appear ; but in only 

 * ' Epidemics of the Middle Ages.' 



