A.D. 173, there was a severe winter, and consequently a famine in England; a pestilence broke out the summer following, and continued to the autumn and subsequent winter. In this year, as also in 175 and 178, Rome was visited by epidemic pestilence, which committed great ravages among the soldiery. Five years after, it was again afflicted with disease; and in A.D. 195, plague prevailed in all Italy. “A great pestilence,” says the historian, “raged in all Italy, and became most violent in Rome by reason of the great concourse of people assembled from all quarters of the world. The emperor, by the advice of his physicians, retired to Laurentum, a cool place beautifully shaded with laurels, on the supposition that the sweet smell of those plants counteracted contagion. The people of the city were also advised by the physicians to fill their noses and ears with sweet-smelling ointments, and to use perfumes, in order to prevent the action of human effluvia and of the contagious air. These precautions, however, as might have been expected, proved of little avail: the distemper proceeded unchecked, and men and cattle continued to perish therefrom in multitudes. Five thousand died daily in Rome for a considerable time, and famine with pestilence persisted for three years.” (See Herodian, Dion Cassius, &c.) A.D. 203, there was an eruption of Mount Vesuvius. In the year 211, a plague, preceded by an earthquake and a great inundation of the river Trent, appeared in the British Isles. A.D. 218, the river Tweed overflowed; and dire pestilence followed four years after, destroying 100,000 lives in Scotland. Mortal pestilence affected the whole world A.D. 250. Italy, Ethiopia, Egypt, Asia, France, Spain, and various other parts suffered great ravages from disease. “For twelve years subsequently,” says Zosimus, “a pestilential fever followed the Scythians, and devoured the scanty remains of the human race.” “Pestilence has contaminated the face of the earth,” says Jornandes, a learned historian. A.D. 252, Alexandria and other districts suffered from epidemic pestilence, which continued its ravages with great fury for twelve or fifteen years. This pestilence was not, however, one uniform disorder, but was comprised of several different kinds, such as dysentery, ignis sacer, or scurvy, typhomania, remittent fevers, &c. According to Cedrenus, there were at the time singular exhalations and dews, which resembled the ichors of dead bodies: “hence,” he says, “constant loimoi, with other severe and unmanageable disorders (βαρέα καὶ ἀνίατα νοσήματα), which destroyed multitudes of the people.”