Spain suffered greatly from severe pestilence in the year 1507, writes Don Miguel Martinez de Leyva,—especially Barcelona, which place may be said to have been scarcely ever free of pestilence. In the diary of Ramon Vila it is stated that the pestilence was at its height in the months of April, May, June, and July. On the 14th of August letters were addressed to the governors of Sicily and Mallorca, informing them that, in consequence of the cessation of the pestilence at Barcelona, the royal family and the nobility had returned to the city. The Portuguese physician Pedro Bayro, who had had much experience in foreign parts, and of whom Don Nicolas Antonio makes memorable mention, wrote a work entitled ‘Novum ac perutile Opusculum de Pestilentiâ et de Curatione ejusdem per utrumque regimen, præservativum, scilicet, et curativum. Turin, 1507.’ In this and the following year, 1508, mention is made of swarms of locusts in the neighbourhood of Seville; in fact, they are reported to have overrun Spain. Epidemic pestilence followed, especially at Cadiz. Constantinople was nearly depopulated by pestilence, which spared neither age nor sex. Germany also suffered from epidemic encephalitis and malignant pneumonia.
A.D. 1510, a violent and universal catarrh prevailed over Europe; in France it was called ‘Coqueluche’ (monk’s-hood), from the practice of covering the patient’s head with a cap to protect him from the air, which was considered very detrimental in this disease. So general was the malady in France, that historians assure us that but few of the inhabitants escaped.—A.D. 1511 a plague, and 1513 a malignant dysentery occurred in Verona.—A.D. 1515, Spain was revisited by epidemic pestilence. A severe earthquake was felt in Denmark, which threw down the steeple of the great church in Copenhagen, and did much damage besides.
The sweating sickness again made its appearance, A.D. 1517, in England, having broken out in London, which was crowded with poor. From a scarcity of artizans about this time, it happened that great numbers of foreigners emigrated from Genoa, Lombardy, France, Germany, and Holland to London, and were engaged in the most lucrative branches of employment. This circumstance appears to have increased the prevalent distresses of the lower orders, and a great insurrection of English artizans followed. The popular commotion was, however, soon suppressed without any considerable damage; and Henry VIII., on a solemn day appointed at Westminster for passing judgment upon the prisoners apprehended on the occasion of the riots, bestowed pardon on them, for he saw into the causes of their discontent, and very soon after caused restrictive alien laws to be enacted. The higher classes enjoyed no immunity from this pestilence; their ranks were thinned, and no precaution seemed to avert death from their abodes. Ammonius of Lucca, a scholar of some celebrity, private secretary to the king, was cut off, after having boasted to Sir Thomas More, only a few hours before his death, that by moderation and good management he had secured both his family and himself from disease. Lords Grey and Clinton fell victims to this malady, as did many knights, courtiers, and officers. So rapid and violent was this disease in its course, that it carried off those who were attacked in two or three hours, so that the first shivering fit was the announcement of death; many who were in good health at noon-day were corpses by the evening. This disease arrived at its height about seven weeks after its first appearance, and continued its ravages for six months. Many learned men at Oxford and Cambridge were carried off by this terrible disease, at a time, too, when the sciences were much cultivated and were flourishing. The town of Calais was visited, and, what was very remarkable, none but the English residents there suffered; the Frenchmen enjoyed an immunity from the disease, which did not even spread to any other part of France,—at least there is no account of its having done so. This same year Germany was visited by a brain fever—an epidemic encephalitis. An earthquake caused great destruction in Suabia. Another disease of much more importance appeared in Holland, lasting only eleven days,—an epidemic œsophagitis (diphtherite) it was considered to be, and from its dangerous and inexplicable symptoms it spread terror and horror around; it was so malignant and rapid in its course, that unless assistance was procured within the first eight hours, the patient was past all hope of recovery before the close of the day. Sudden pains in the throat, with violent oppression about the region of the heart, threatened suffocation, and at length actually produced it. From the journal of Tyengius it would appear that this epidemic extended towards the south, and in the same summer appeared at Basle, when in the space of eight months it destroyed 2000 persons. Small-pox raged with great mortality at this time in Hispaniola.
A.D. 1518. Marselio Ficino, in his work on the plague, written according to Haller in 1518, describes the treatment that was adopted, consisting chiefly in the application of cupping-glasses below the carbuncles. In the city of Cascante, in the kingdom of Navarre, there broke out an epizootic, which caused great destruction among the horses of the regiments quartered there; the principal feature of the pestilence was extensive apostemes on the head and throat, attended with an insatiable thirst and hectic fever. About the period of the earthquakes which were experienced in Xativa A.D. 1517, epidemic disease prevailed in many parts of Spain: it extended subsequently to the city of Valencia, and caused great mortality in 1519. The public authorities, because of the general prevalence of disease and the consequent mortality, withdrew to Murviedro.
A.D. 1521, in June, rogatory prayers were offered up in consequence of the dreadful pestilence which ravaged Barcelona. The plague raged at Dresden also.
The last plague of Mallorca, of which notice is taken by Don Vincente Mut, occurred in the year 1523. Great numbers were carried off by it. The city of Valencia also suffered from a similar pestilence, which was attributed to atmospheric poison. The year following, 1524, a bubonic pestilence, as it was termed, raged with great fierceness, and carried off 50,000 of the inhabitants of Milan. The plague was also rife in the city of Xativa, and the greatest pestilence from which the city of Seville ever suffered, occurred about this time, and persisted for some years.
A.D. 1525, the sweating sickness, which had been for some time raging in England, extended to other parts of Europe, and in the course of five years spread over Lower Germany, the Low Countries, Holland, Zealand, Brabant, Flanders, Denmark, Norway, and France. So rapid was this disease, that on making its appearance in any place, it would seize on 600 and upwards in a day, while of this number, when so seized, rarely more than six recovered, so destructive was it. The distemper was generally supposed to have been caused by some poisonous quality of the atmosphere.
A.D. 1527, mention is made by Franco of a pestilence which broke out at Xativa. Great numbers of the Imperial army of Italy were destroyed by pestilence after the sacking of Rome; it also carried off thousands at Wurtemburg. Hailstorms were prevalent about this period in Italy. Cardinal Gastaldi relates that, in the following year, 1528, the kingdom of Aragon was visited by severe plague, the cause of which was superstitiously attributed to the ringing of the great bell of Velilla.[1] Deadly fevers were rife in London, which, in the autumn, degenerated into sweating sickness: it invaded Cork, in Ireland, and Italy also. From this period (1528) until 1534, there was experienced much suffering from famine, preceded by moisture and great heat: repeated inundations occurred, and continuous summer fogs prevailed in Italy. Petechial fevers were very destructive: the French army before Naples lost great numbers from spotted fevers. The ‘trousse galante’ carried off, it is said, a fourth part of the population of France during this period: this disease was attributed to elemental disturbances; the spring was cold, and the summer wet, so that the growing corn was destroyed, and a dire famine was the consequence throughout France, it being more distressing than the period of scarcity in the time of Louis XI. on account of its long persistence; for the failure of the harvest continued for five years in succession, during which period all natural order of the seasons appeared to be reversed. A damp heat prevailed in the autumn and in winter. The course of all vegetation was changed; scarcely had the trees shed their leaves in autumn, when they began to bud again and the fruit-trees to bear blossoms. The disease was a highly inflammatory fever, which proved fatal in a very short time, very frequently in the space of a few hours. In many cases of those who recovered, the hair and the nails dropped off, and convalescence was tedious, leaving the constitution much shaken. These symptoms were evidently the same as those observed in what was termed the ‘Dandy fever,’ which prevailed in later times in France and in the West India Islands in the year 1828. During this period drought, swarms of locusts, and fiery meteors were observed in the north of Germany.
A.D. 1529, epidemic pestilence prevailed and carried off many distinguished persons in England. Contemporaries agree in their accounts of the dreadful weather all over Europe; the winter, however, was mild, and vegetation particularly advanced; violets were gathered at Erfurt in the middle of February: throughout the spring and summer wet weather continued to prevail; constant torrents of rain deluged the fields, and misery and famine spread in every direction. A heavy rain of four days’ continuance in the south of Germany, in June, was called the ‘St. Vitus’ Torrent,’ and was considered a hitherto unheard-of event; whole districts were under water, and many perished therefrom. An universal storm occurred again in August, occasioning great floods, especially in Thuringia and Saxony: the sun was rarely seen through the dark clouds during the latter part of summer and the whole of the autumn: with the exception of some suffocatingly hot days, the weather remained gloomy, cold, and wet, so that the people fancied they were breathing the foggy air of Britain. Violent remittent pestilence appeared in Amsterdam: Tyengius describes it as having broken out on the 20th of September, in the afternoon, during a misty foggy state of the atmosphere: it committed great ravages for the period of five days, when it disappeared as suddenly as it arose. In various parts of the German States the birds of the air became diseased; in the neighbourhood of Freyburg, in the Breisgau, they were found dead in great numbers, scattered under the trees, with boils as large as peas under their wings, indicating a disease that no doubt extended far beyond the Rhine. The river fish, from some cause, became unfit for food, and the sweating sickness broke out at Hamburgh, where it destroyed daily from forty to sixty persons. This pestilence lasted about a fortnight at Hamburgh, and 2000 of its inhabitants fell its victims: it afterwards spread all over Germany; it prevailed at Lubeck, Stettin, and in Zwickau. Earthquakes were experienced in Italy; blood-coloured rain fell at Cremona; a comet was seen in July; and disease prevailed among the porpoises in the Baltic. The famine in Germany this year is described by various authorities as being frightful. Suabia, Lorraine, Alsace, and the southern districts bordering on the Rhine suffered especially: in those places the misery was equal to that in France. In the Venetian territory, thousands perished from hunger, as was the case all over Upper Italy. In Pomerania, a peculiar kind of debility or lassitude affected the inhabitants: in the midst of their work, and without any conceivable cause, persons became palsied in their hands and feet, rendering them incapable of any exertion. About this period a pestilence, which was called ‘the English disease,’ broke out at Brussels, and carried off many of its inhabitants.