“His study was but little on the Bible,” says the poet, who also intimates that as gold in physic is a cordial, he was partial to fees.
Fellowship of Barbers and Surgeons.
On the 10th of September, 1348, says Anthony à Wood,[796] “appeared before Mr. John Northwode, D.D., Chancellor of the University of Oxford, John Bradey, Barber, Richard Fell, Barber Surgeon, Thomas Billye, Waferer, and with them the whole Company and Fellowship of Barbers within the precincts of Oxford, and intending thenceforward to join and bind themselves in amity and love, brought with them certain ordinations and statutes drawn up in writings for the weal of the Craft of Barbers, desiring the said Chancellor that he would peruse and correct them, and when he had so done, to put the University seal to them. Thus the Barbers of Oxford were formed into a Corporation, one of their ordinations being that no man nor servant of the Craft of Barbers or Surgery should reveal any infirmity or secret disease they have, to their customers or patients. Of which, if any one should be found guilty, then he was to pay 20s., whereof 6s. 8d. was to go to Our Lady’s box, 6s. 8d. to the Chancellor, or in his absence, to the Commissary, and 6.s. 8d. to the Proctors.” The Barbers, Surgeons, Waferers, and makers of singing bread were all of the same fellowship. They all continued in one society till the year 1500, when the Cappers or Knitters of Caps, sometimes called Capper-Hurrers, were united to them.[797] In 1551 the Barbers and Waferers laid aside their charter and took one in the name of the City; but Wood says they lived without any ordination, statutes, or charter till 1675, when they received a charter from the University.[798]
The Black Death.
A great pestilence desolated Asia, Europe, and Africa in the fourteenth century, which was known as The Black Death. Its origin was oriental, and it was distinguished by boils and tumours of the glands, accompanied by black spots. Many patients became stupefied and fell into a deep sleep; they became speechless, their tongues were black, and their thirst unquenchable. Their sufferings were so terrible that many in despair committed suicide. Those who waited upon the sick caught the disease, and in Constantinople many houses were bereft of their last inhabitant. Guy de Chauliac, the physician (born about 1300), bravely defied the plague when it raged in Avignon for six or eight weeks, although the form which it there assumed was distinguished by the pestilential breath of the patients who expectorated blood, so that the near vicinity of the persons who were sick was certain death. The courageous de Chauliac, when all his colleagues had fled the city, boldly and constantly assisted the sufferers. He saw the plague twice in Avignon—in 1348, and twelve years later. Boccacio, who was in Florence when it raged in that city, has described it in the Decameron. No medicine brought relief; not only men, but animals sickened with it and rapidly expired. Boccacio himself saw two hogs, on the rags of a person who had died of the plague, fall dead, after staggering a little as if they had been poisoned. Multitudes of other animals fell victims to the epidemic in the same way. In France many young and strong persons died as soon as they were struck, as if by lightning. The plague spread over England with terrible rapidity. It first broke out in the county of Dorset; advancing to Devonshire and Somersetshire, it reached Bristol, Gloucester, Oxford, and London. The annals of contemporaries record the awful fact that throughout the land only a tenth of the population remained alive. The contagion spread from England to Norway. Poland and Russia suffered later in a similar manner, although the disease did not always manifest itself in the same form in every case. Only two medical descriptions of the disease have come down to us—one by Guy de Chauliac, the other by Raymond Chalin de Vinario. Chauliac notices the fatal coughing of blood; Vinario in addition describes fluxes of blood from the bowels, and bleeding at the nose. What were the causes which produced so dreadful a plague, it is impossible to discover with certainty.
Dr. Hecker, to whose work on the subject[799] I am indebted for the information concerning it, says that “mighty revolutions in the organism of the earth, of which we have credible information, had preceded it. From China to the Atlantic the foundations of the earth were shaken, throughout Asia and Europe the atmosphere was in commotion, and endangered, by its baneful influence, both vegetable and animal life.”
In 1337, 4,000,000 of people perished by famine in China in the neighbourhood of Kiang alone. Floods, famines, and earthquakes were frequent, both in Asia and Europe. In Cyprus a pestiferous wind spread a poisonous odour before an earthquake shook the island to its foundations, and many of the inhabitants fell down suddenly and expired in dreadful agonies after inhaling the noxious gases. German chemists state that a thick stinking mist advancing from the east spread over Italy in thousands of places, and vast chasms opened in the earth which exhaled the most noxious vapours.
The Dancing Mania.
In the year 1374 a strange delusion arose in Germany, a convulsion infuriating the human frame, and afflicting the people for more than two centuries. It was called the dance of St. John or of St. Vitus, and those affected by it performed a wild dance while screaming and foaming with fury. The sight of the afflicted communicated the mania to the observers, and the demoniacal epidemic soon spread over the whole of Germany and the neighbouring countries to the north-west.
Bands of men and women went about the streets forming circles hand in hand, and danced madly for hours together, until they fell in a state of exhaustion to the ground. They complained, when in this state, of great oppression, and groaned as if in extreme pain, till they were tightly bandaged round their waists with cloths, when they speedily recovered. While dancing they were insensible to external impressions, but their minds were in a condition of great exaltation, and they saw in their fancies heavenly beings and visitants from the world of spirits. At Aix-la Chapelle, at Cologne, and in 1418 at Strasburg, the “Dancing Plague” infatuated the people by thousands.[800]