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
Finally, in Russia the plague appeared two years later than in Southern
Europe; yet here again, with the same symptoms as elsewhere. Russian
contemporaries have recorded that it began with rigor, heat, and darting
pain in the shoulders and back; that it was accompanied by spitting of
blood, and terminated fatally in two, or at most three days. It is not
till the year 1360 that we find buboes mentioned as occurring in the
neck, in the axillae, and in the groins, which are stated to have broken
out when the spitting of blood had continued some time. According to the
experience of Western Europe, however, it cannot be assumed that these
symptoms did not appear at an earlier period.
Thus much, from authentic sources, on the nature of the Black Death. The
descriptions which have been communicated contain, with a few unimportant
exceptions, all the symptoms of the oriental plague which have been
observed in more modern times. No doubt can obtain on this point. The
facts are placed clearly before our eyes. We must, however, bear in mind
that this violent disease does not always appear in the same form, and
that while the essence of the poison which it produces, and which is
separated so abundantly from the body of the patient, remains unchanged,
it is proteiform in its varieties, from the almost imperceptible vesicle,
unaccompanied by fever, which exists for some time before it extends its
poison inwardly, and then excites fever and buboes, to the fatal form in
which carbuncular inflammations fall upon the most important viscera.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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