During the reign of Edward III. it rained in England from Midsummer unto Christmas, when a pestilential period commenced. A disease termed ‘Sorte Diod,’--the black pestilence, or death,--committed the most terrific ravages; the lungs were principally affected. Fracastorius, in his ‘Syphilis,’ describes the malady. The translation runs thus: “A hundred years twice told have took their flight Since Saturn mix’d with Mars his hated light, Who, with their baleful influence, did infest The rich and potent nations of the East: Hence raged a dreadful pest before unknown, Which seized the lungs, and made the breast its throne; Four days it tyrannized with dreadful sway, When life in purple streams broke out and fled away.” This malady was accompanied by fever, difficulty of breathing, and spitting of blood; the respiration was so laborious that the sick were obliged to be always in an upright posture; deglutition was difficult, attended with flushed countenance and great restlessness: at the onset the cough was violent, but without loss of blood; after a short time, the expectoration becoming bloody, hemorrhage succeeded, when death ensued in three days: spots and abscesses sometimes formed when the disease was protracted unto the fifth day. After the disease had persisted for some months, the lungs were no longer affected, but the glands of the axillæ and of the groins, and the parotids, swelled and suppurated. In England it lasted nine years. There were 50,000 buried in one year in the Charterhouse churchyard in London. A murrain among the cattle succeeded this pestilence, and there was a great scarcity of all sorts of provisions. Greenland was entirely depopulated by this pestilence.