“For the pestilence commenced at the Orient, and cast its fangs against all the world, passing through Paris towards the West.
“It was so destructive that it left only a quarter of the population of mankind behind.
“It was a shame and disgrace to medicine, as many doctors dared not visit the sick through fear of becoming infected; and those who visited the sick made few cures and fewer fees, for the sick all died save a few. Not many having buboes escaped death.
“For preservation, there was no better remedy than to fly from the infection, to purge one’s self with aloe pills, to diminish the blood by phlebotomy, to purify the air with fire, to comfort the heart with cordials and apples and other things of good odor; to console the humors with Armenian bole and resist dry rot by the use of acid things. For the cure of the plague we used bleedings and evacuations, electuaries, syrups and cordials, and the external apostumes or swellings were poulticed with boiled figs and onions mixed with oil and butter; the buboes were afterwards opened and treated by the usual cures for ulcers.
“Carbuncles were leeched, scarified and cauterized.
“I, to avoid infamy, dared not absent myself from the care of the sick, but lived in continual fear, preserving myself as long as possible by the before-mentioned remedies.
“Nevertheless, towards the end of the epidemic, I fell into a fever, which continued with an aposthume in the groin, and was ill for nigh on six weeks, being in such danger that all my companions believed I should die; nevertheless, the bubo being poulticed and treated as I have above indicated, I recovered, thanks be to the will of God.”
According to the records of that time, many persons died the first day of their illness. These bad cases were announced by a violent fever, with cephalgia, vertigo, drowsiness, incoherency in ideas, and loss of memory; the tongue and palate were black and browned, exhaling an almost insupportable fetidity. Others were attacked by violent inflammation of the lungs, with hemorrhage; also gangrene, which manifested itself in black spots all over the body; if, to the contrary, the body was covered by abscesses, the patients seemed to have some chance for recovery.
Medicines were powerless, all remedies seeming to be useless. The disease attacked rich and poor indiscriminately; it overpowered the robust and debilitated; the young and the old were its victims. On the first symptom the patients fell into a profound melancholy and seemed to abandon all hope of recovery. This moral prostration aggravated their physical condition, and mental depression hastened the time of death. The fear of contagion was so great that but few persons attended the sick.
The clergy, encouraged by the Pope, visited the bedsides of the dying who bequeathed all their wealth to the Church. The plague was considered on all sides as a punishment inflicted by God, and it was this idea that induced armies of penitents to assemble on the public streets to do penance for their sins. Men and women went half naked along the highways flagellating each other with whips, and, growing desperate with the fall of night, they committed scandalous crimes. In certain places the Jews were accused of being the authors of the plague by poisoning the wells; hence the Hebrews were persecuted, sometimes burned alive by the fanatical sects known as Flagellants, Begardes and Turlupins, who were encouraged in their acts of violence by the priests, notwithstanding the intervention of Clement VI.