A History of Epidemics in Britain, Volume 1 (of 2): From A.D. 664 to the Extinction of PlagueCreighton, Charles
History
A History of Epidemics in Britain, Volume 1 (of 2): From A.D. 664 to the Extinction of Plague
Creighton, Charles
Epidemics -- Great Britain -- History
The type of the Black Death in England is sufficiently indicated by Le
Baker, who was probably living at Osney, near Oxford, when the infection
began, and indubitably by friar Clyn of Kilkenny. Le Baker mentions the
_apostemata_ or swellings in diverse parts, their sudden eruption, and
their extreme hardness and dryness, so that hardly any fluid escaped when
they were lanced according to the usual method of treating them[225]. He
speaks also of a peculiarly fatal form, from which few or none recovered;
it was characterised by “small black pustules” on the skin, probably the
livid spots or “tokens” which came to be considered the peculiar mark of
the plague, and were certainly the index of a malignant type of it, just
as the corresponding haemorrhages are in pestilential fever (or typhus)
and in yellow fever. The disease, he adds, was swift in doing its work:
one day people were in high health and the next day dead and buried.
Knighton also says, with special reference to Bristol, that the attack was
fatal sometimes within twelve hours, and usually within three days at the
most. The treatment, which would have been, according to all subsequent
experience, the privilege only of those who could pay for it, would appear
to have consisted in lancing the risings or botches in the armpits, neck,
or groins; these were the lymph-glands enlarged to the size of a walnut or
of a hen’s egg, and of a livid colour,--the most striking and certain of
all the plague-signs.
Clyn’s account of the disease, as he saw it at Kilkenny in 1349, is
important for including one remarkable symptom on which great importance
has been laid as distinctive of the Black Death among the epidemics of
bubo-plague, namely haemorrhage from the lungs: “For many died from
carbuncles, and boils, and botches which grew on the legs and under the
arms; others from passion of the head, as if thrown into a frenzy; others
by vomiting blood[226].” It was so contagious, he says, that those who
touched the dead, or even the sick, were incontinently infected that they
died, and both penitent and confessor were borne together to the same
grave. Such was the fear and horror of it that men scarce dared exercise
the offices of pity, namely, to visit the sick and bury the dead. Clyn’s
list of symptoms includes all the most prominent features of the plague as
we shall find them described for the great epidemics of the Stuart
period--the botches in the armpits or groins, the carbuncles, the boils
(or blains), and the frenzy or delirium, as well as the special symptom of
the great mortality--vomiting of blood.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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