“The physicians, embarrassed by their unacquaintance with the forms of the disease, and thinking that the element of it was secreted in the buboes, determined to examine the dead bodies; and opening these tumours, found in them something in the likeness of a coal. Some died immediately, some after many days; some threw out black pustules, the size of a lentil, all over their bodies, and these lived not one day longer, but died on the instant. Many were carried off at once by vomiting blood. One thing I have to observe, that the most eminent physicians predicted the death of many, who soon after, against all expectations, had nothing ailing, and persisted that many would live, who at that moment were on the point of dissolution. Thus, throughout the disease, there was nothing for which human reason could account,[110] but in almost every instance some unlooked–for event occurred. The bath did good to some, and no less harm to others. Many who were neglected, died; others unexpectedly survived. Medical treatment had contradictory effects on those who tried it; and, in brief, the wit of man found no means of safety, either to ward off or to overcome the evil, but its attack was without apparent cause, and the recovery spontaneous. “The disease lasted in Constantinople four months, and was at its height for three. At first the number of dead was little greater than ordinary; then the evil increased till it amounted to 5000 daily, and at last to 10,000, and even more. At first every man took care himself to bury those in his household, casting them secretly, or by open force, into other persons’ tombs; but at last all was confusion. For slaves remained without masters; and men, formerly rich and happy, were left without common attendance by the sickness and death of their slaves; and many houses were quite emptied of inhabitants: so that some remained many days without burial, because there were no persons that knew them. When the Emperor heard of this, he sent money and soldiers from the palace, and ordered Theodorus, an officer called by the Latins the Referendary, who received all petitions addressed to the Emperor, and signified his pleasure with respect to them, to take charge of this matter; so that they whose houses were not yet entirely desolated performed the funeral rites of their own connexions; and Theodorus, at the imperial expense, and partly also at his own, buried those bodies that had none to care for them. But when the tombs that were already constructed were filled with corpses, trenches were dug all about the city, into which every one cast the dead as he could, and went away; until the grave–diggers, wearied out, took off the roofs of the towers on the wall of the district called Sukai,[111] into which they cast the bodies promiscuously, and when they were full replaced the roofs. The fetid smell from hence reached the city, and much annoyed the inhabitants, especially when the wind lay in that quarter.