These explanations of the incidence of plague are in part repeated in the section of the essay where the author gives directions for avoiding it. After enjoining penance, he proceeds:
“It is a good remedy to void and change the infect place. But some may not profitably change their places. Therefore as much as to them is possible, it is to be eschewed every cause of putrefaction and stinking, and namely every fleshly lust with women is to be eschewed. Also the southern wind, which wind is naturally infective: therefore spar the windows, etc. Of the same cause, every foul stink is to be eschewed—of stable, stinking fields, ways, or streets, and namely of stinking dead carrion; and most of stinking waters, where in many places water is kept two days or two nights, or else there be gutters of water casten under the earth which caused great stink and corruption. And of this cause some die in that house where such things happen, and in another house die none, as it is said afore. Likewise in that place where the worts and coles putrefied, it maketh noifull savour and stinking. For in like wise as by the sweet odour of bawme the heart and spirits have recreation, so of evil savours they be made feeble. Therefore keep your house that an infect air enter not in. For an infect air most causeth putrefaction in places and houses where folk sleep. Therefore let your house be clean, and make clear fire of wood flaming: let your house be made with fumigation of herbs, that is to say, with leaves of bay-tree, juniper, yberiorgam—it is in the apothecary shops—wormwood etc.... For a little crust corrupteth all the body.
“Also in the time of the pestilence it is better to abide within the house; for it is not wholesome to go into the city or town. Also let your house be sprinkled, specially in summer, with vinegar and roses, and with the leaves of vine tree. Also it is good to wash your hands ofttimes in the day with water and vinegar, and wipe your face with your hands, and smell to them. Also it is good always to savour aigre things.”
Then follows his own Montpellier experience, already quoted.
The diagnostics come in casually along with the treatment:
“But some would understand how may a man feel when he is infect. I say that a man which is infect, that day eateth not much meat for he is replenished with evil humours; and forthwith after dinner he hath lust to sleep, and feeleth great heat under cold. Also he hath great pain in the forehead.... He shall feel a swelling under the arm, or about the share, or about the ears.... When a man feeleth himself infect, as soon as he may, let him be let blood plenteously till he swoon: then stop the vein. For a little letting of blood moveth or stirreth venom.”
Then follow directions for bleeding, according to the position of the bubo—in the armpit, groin or neck, the direction “if on the back” probably having reference to the carbuncle[402]. The section on treatment, which is the last, ends with a prescription for a medicine “that the sooner a swelling be made ripe.”
These are sufficiently clear indications of the bubonic nature of the disease called pestilence. At the same time the writer includes an ague as also pestilential, due to similar causes and arising on similar occasions. This is a use of the name ague which should not be mistaken for its common application to intermittent fever. Ague was simply (febris) acuta; and pestilential ague was a name for typhus fever in the sixteenth century (as in Jones’ Dyall of Agues), as well as in Ireland until a much later period. This early association of acute pestilential fever with true bubo-plague means the same relationship of typhus to plague which was systematically taught by Sydenham, Willis, and Morton in the seventeenth century; typhus in their time was the frequent attendant of plague,—a pestis mitior; and it would appear to have been its attendant and congener in the fourteenth century also.