| In Florence there died of the black plague | 60,000 |
| In Venice | 100,000 |
| In Marseilles, in one month | 16,000 |
| In Sienna | 70,000 |
| In Paris | 50,000 |
| In St Denis | 14,000 |
| In Avignon | 60,000 |
| In Strasbourg | 16,000 |
| In Lübeck | 9,000 |
| In Basle | 14,000 |
| In Erfurt at least | 16,000 |
| In Weimar | 5,000 |
| In Lemburg | 2,500 |
| In London at least | 100,000 |
| In Norwich | 51,000 |
To which may be added:—
| Franciscan Friars in Germany | 124,434 |
| Minorites in Italy | 30,000 |
From the circumstance—illustrative of the religious and blind bigotry of this period—that the Jews were brutally tortured, massacred, and burnt, on suspicion of having poisoned the wells from which drinking water was drawn, it may be inferred that the wells, owing to the entire absence of drainage, which led to their contamination by sewage matters, contributed largely to the spread of the pestilence.
Of the potency of the contagion disseminated by the ‘Black Death’ Hecker records:—
“Every spot which the sick had touched, their breath, their clothes, spread the contagion; and in all other places the attendants and friends, who were either blind to their danger, or heroically despised it, fell a sacrifice to their sympathy.
“Even the eyes of the patient were considered as sources of contagion, which had the power of acting at a distance, either on account of their unwonted lustre, or the distortion
which they always suffer in plague, or in conformity with an ancient notion, according to which the sight was considered as the bearer of a demoniacal excitement.
“The pestilential death of the sick, who expectorated blood, caused a terrible contagion far and near, for even the vicinity of those who had fallen ill of plague was certain death, so that parents abandoned their infected children, and all the ties of kindred were dissolved.”
There is a striking similarity between the above description, referring to the plague of 1348, and the following, which is extracted from Dr Döppner’s official medical report to the Russian government on the plague which manifested itself at Veltianka in Astrakan as lately as January, 1879. Dr Döppner, writes:—