“An inquiry into the causes of the Black Death,” says our author, “will not be without important results in the study of the plagues which have visited the world, although it cannot advance beyond generalisation without entering upon a field hitherto uncultivated, and, to this hour, entirely unknown. 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.” When, however, Dr Hecker proceeds to specify the earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, and other terrific events which shook the foundations of the earth from China to the Atlantic, we do not find that the enumeration at all bears out this general description. A large proportion of such disastrous phenomena as he has been able to collect relate to China; and although the plague should be proved to have travelled from the East, it is not traced, as an identical disease, so far eastward as to China, and therefore is but vaguely connected with the great droughts and violent rains which afflicted that region of the earth. Nearer at home, in Europe, we have mention made of “frequent thunderstorms,” and an eruption of Ætna, but thunderstorms and a volcanic eruption have not, on other occasions, given rise to a plague; not to add, that if the atmosphere of Europe was tainted from causes of this kind, springing from its own soil and its own climate, it would be quite superfluous to trace the disease to the East at all. We should merely say that a similar disease broke out in different countries at the same time, demonstrating some quite cosmical or universal cause. The most important fact which is mentioned here, as proving some wide atmospheric derangement, is the “thick stinking mist seen to advance from the East and spread itself over Italy.” But Dr Hecker himself adds, that at such a time natural occurrences would be transformed or exaggerated into miracles; and we are quite sure that any really extraordinary event, occurring simultaneously with the plague, would, without further inquiry, be described as the cause of it. An unusual mist, just as a comet or any unusual meteor, appearing at the time, would be charged with the calamity.
On so obscure a subject we have no desire to advance any dogmatic opinion. There are facts connected with this and other great epidemics which, to men of cautious research, have seemed to point to some widespreading poison, some subtle, deleterious matter diffused through the air, or some abnormal condition of the atmosphere itself. Such there may be, acting either as immediate or predisposing cause of the disease. But to our apprehension, all plagues and pestilences have been bred from two well-known and sufficient causes—famine and filth. Scanty and unwholesome diet first disorders and debilitates the frame, fevers ensue, the foul atmosphere of crowded unventilated dwellings becomes impregnated by breathings that have passed through putrid lungs; and thus the disease, especially in a hot climate, attains to that malignity that the stricken wretch, move him where you will, becomes the centre of infection to all around him, and from his pestiferous dwelling there creeps a poison which invades even the most salubrious portion of the town; which, stealing through the garden-gate and over the flower-beds, enters even into the very palace itself. Doubtless other causes may co-operate, as unusual rains and fogs; the fact that a murrain amongst cattle sometimes accompanies or precedes a plague, indicates local causes of this description; but the true source of the disease lies in the city man has built, in his improvidence or injustice, his ignorance or his sloth.
It is thus that Dr Hecker speaks of the manner in which the disease may be propagated, so far as the agency of man is concerned:—we do not seem to want any quite cosmical influence.
“Thus much from authentic sources of the nature of the Black Death. The descriptions which have been communicated contain, with a few unimportant exceptions, all the symptoms of the Oriental plague, which have been observed in more modern times. No doubt can obtain on this point. The facts are placed clearly before our eyes. We must, however, bear in mind that this violent disease does not always appear in the same form; and that, while the essence of the poison which it produces, and which is separated so abundantly from the body of the patient, remains unchanged, it is proteoform in its varieties, from the almost imperceptible vesicle, unaccompanied by fever, which exists for some time before it extends its poison inwardly, and then excites fevers and buboes, to the fatal form in which carbuncular inflammations fall upon the most important viscera.
“Such was the form which the plague assumed in the fourteenth century, for the accompanying chest affection, which appeared in all the countries whereof we have received any account, cannot, on a comparison with similar and familiar symptoms, be considered as any other than the inflammation in the lungs of modern medicine, a disease which at present only appears sporadically, and owing to a putrid decomposition of the fluids is probably combined with hemorrhages from the vessels of the lungs. Now as every carbuncle, whether it be cutaneous or internal, generates in abundance the matter of contagion which has given rise to it, so therefore must the breaths of the affected have been poisonous in this plague, and on this account its power of contagion wonderfully increased; wherefore the opinion appears incontrovertible that, owing to the accumulated numbers of the diseased, not only individual chambers and houses, but whole cities, were infected; which, moreover, in the middle ages, were, with few exceptions, narrowly built, kept in a filthy state, and surrounded with stagnant ditches. Flight was in consequence of no avail to the timid; for some, though they had sedulously avoided all communication with the diseased and the suspected, yet their clothes were saturated with the pestifierous atmosphere, and every inspiration imparted to them the seeds of the destructive malady which, in the greater number of cases, germinated with but too much fertility. Add to which the usual propagation of the plague through clothes, beds, and a thousand other things to which the pestilential poison adheres,—a propagation which, from want of caution, must have been infinitely multiplied; and since articles of this kind, removed from the access of air, not only retain the matter of contagion for an indefinite period, but also increase its activity, and engender it like a living being, frightful ill consequences followed for many years after the first fury of the pestilence was passed.”
It may be worth noticing that Dr Hecker, or his translator, uses the terms contagion and infection indiscriminately; nor is the question entered into whether the disease is capable of being propagated by mere contact, without inhaling the morbific matter, or becoming inoculated with it through some puncture in the skin. Dr Hecker nowhere gives countenance to such a supposition. The poison would hardly penetrate by mere touch through a sound and healthy skin. Such a belief, however, was likely enough to prevail at a time when we are told that “even the eyes of the patient were considered as sources of contagion, which had the power of acting at a distance, whether on account of their unwonted lustre or the distortion which they always suffer in plague, or whether in conformity with an ancient notion, according to which the sight was considered as the bearer of a demoniacal enchantment.”
Avignon is here mentioned as the first city in which the plague broke out in Europe. We have a report of it from a contemporary physician, Guy de Chauliac, a courageous man, it seems, who “vindicated the honour of medicine by bidding defiance to danger, boldly and constantly assisting the affected, and disdaining the excuse of his colleagues, who held the Arabian notion, that medical aid was unavailing, and that the contagion justified flight.” The plague appeared twice in Avignon, first in the year 1348, and twelve years later, in 1360, “when it returned from Germany.” On the first occasion it raged chiefly amongst the poor; on the second more amongst the higher classes, destroying a great many children, whom it had formerly spared, and but few women. We presume that on the second occasion the plague was re-introduced at once amongst the merchant class of the city, and this would account for fewer women falling victims to it, because men of this class could take precautions for the safety of their wives and daughters. But why a greater number of children should have died, when the women were comparatively spared, is what we will make no attempt to explain.
How fatal it proved at Florence, Boccaccio has recorded. It is from him we learn with certainty that other animals besides man were capable of being infected by the disease—a fact of no little interest in the history of the plague. He mentions that he himself saw two hogs, on the rags of a person who had died of plague, after staggering about for a short time, fall down dead as if they had taken poison. A multitude of dogs, cats, fowls, and other domesticated animals, were, he tells us, fellow-sufferers with man.
In Germany the mortality was not so great as in Italy, but the disease assumed the same character. In France, it is said, many were struck as if by lightning, and died on the spot—and this more frequently among the young and strong than the old. Throughout England the disease spread with great rapidity, men dying in some cases immediately, in others within twelve hours, or at latest in two days. Here, as elsewhere, the inflammatory boils and buboes were recognised at once as prognosticating a fatal issue. It first broke out in the county of Dorset. Few places seem to have escaped; and the mortality was so great that contemporary annalists have reported (with what degree of accuracy we cannot say) that throughout the whole land not more than a tenth part of the inhabitants had survived.
The north of Europe did not escape, nor did all the snows of Russia protect her from this invasion. In Norway the disease broke out in a frightful manner. Nor was the sea a refuge; sailors found no safety in their ships; vessels were seen driving about on the ocean and drifting on the shore, whose crews had perished to the last man.