Michael Felibien, a Benedictine friar of Saint Maur, also left notes on the epidemic of gangrene. He states in his _History of Paris_: “In the same year, 1129, Paris, as the rest of France, was afflicted by the _maladie des ardents_. This disease, although known from the mortality it caused in the years 945 and 1041, was all the more terrible inasmuch as it appeared to have no remedy. The mass of blood, already corrupted by internal heat which devoured the entire body, pushed its fluids outwards into tumors, which degenerated into incurable ulcers and thus killed off thousands of people.” We could make many more citations, derived from ancient writers, but we think we have quoted enough authors to prove that the _mal des ardents_ was only the plague confounded with the symptoms known as gangrenous ergotism. Could it not have been a plague of a gangrenous type? We cannot positively affirm, however, that it had no connection with poisoning by the _sphacelia_ developed in grain, particularly on rye. Its onset was sudden, and often very rapidly followed by a fatal termination. The _mal des ardents_ had no prodroma with general symptoms and marked periods, as in gangrenous ergotism, but it had, to the contrary, an irregular march, rapid in its evolution, “devouring,” as Mezeray says, “the feet, the arms, the face, and private parts, commencing most generally in the groin.” THE ERUPTIVE FEVERS OF THE SIXTH CENTURY —— VARIOLA, MEASLES, SCARLATINA. Before the sixth century, the terrible period of the plague, one never heard of the eruptive fevers. Small-pox, measles and scarlet fever were unknown to the ancients. Neither Hippocrates nor Galen nor any of the Greek physicians who practiced in Rome make mention of these diseases. The historians and poets of Greece and Italy who have written largely on medical subjects remain mute on these three great questions in pathology. Some authors have endeavored to torture texts for the purpose of throwing light on the contagious exanthemata, but they have not been repaid for their fresh imagination.[17] It is admitted to-day that the eruptive fevers are comparatively new diseases, which made their appearance in the Middle Ages. The first document that the history of medicine possesses on this point is that left by Marius, Bishop of Aventicum, in Switzerland, who says, in his chronicle, “_Anno 570, morbus validus cum profluvio ventris et variola, Italiam Galliamque valde affecit_.”[18] Ten years later, Gregory of Tours described the symptoms of the new disease in the following terms:[19]