The Black Death, and The Dancing ManiaHecker, J. F. C. (Justus Friedrich Carl)
History
The Black Death, and The Dancing Mania
Hecker, J. F. C. (Justus Friedrich Carl)
Black Death; Chorea, Epidemic; Epidemics
In England the malady appeared, as at Avignon, with spitting of blood,
and with the same fatality, so that the sick who were afflicted either
with this symptom or with vomiting of blood, died in some cases
immediately, in others within twelve hours, or at the latest two days.
The inflammatory boils and buboes in the groins and axillae were
recognised at once as prognosticating a fatal issue, and those were past
all hope of recovery in whom they arose in numbers all over the body. It
was not till towards the close of the plague that they ventured to open,
by incision, these hard and dry boils, when matter flowed from them in
small quantity, and thus, by compelling nature to a critical suppuration,
many patients were saved. Every spot which the sick had touched, their
breath, their clothes, spread the contagion; and, as in all other places,
the attendants and friends who were either blind to their danger, or
heroically despised it, fell a sacrifice to their sympathy. Even the
eyes of the patient were considered a sources of contagion, which had the
power of acting at a distance, whether on account of their unwonted
lustre, or the distortion which they always suffer in plague, or whether
in conformity with an ancient notion, according to which the sight was
considered as the bearer of a demoniacal enchantment. Flight from
infected cities seldom availed the fearful, for the germ of the disease
adhered to them, and they fell sick, remote from assistance, in the
solitude of their country houses.
Thus did the plague spread over England with unexampled rapidity, after
it had first broken out in the county of Dorset, whence it advanced
through the counties of Devon and Somerset, to Bristol, and thence
reached Gloucester, Oxford and London. Probably few places escaped,
perhaps not any; for the annuals of contemporaries report that throughout
the land only a tenth part of the inhabitants remained alive.
From England the contagion was carried by a ship to Bergen, the capital
of Norway, where the plague then broke out in its most frightful form,
with vomiting of blood; and throughout the whole country, spared not more
than a third of the inhabitants. The sailors found no refuge in their
ships; and vessels were often seen driving about on the ocean and
drifting on shore, whose crews had perished to the last man.
In Poland the affected were attacked with spitting blood, and died in a
few days in such vast numbers, that, as it has been affirmed, scarcely a
fourth of the inhabitants were left.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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