Transcriber’s notes: The text of this book has been preserved as in the original (including punctuation irregularities); archaic and inconsistent spellings have been retained except where obviously misspelled in the original. Corrected misspellings include the following: trangressed —> transgressed espepecially —> especially oriential —> oriental Spelling inconsistencies include the following: medicin/medecine/medicine monastaries/monasteries sunset/sun-set 2nd/2d/2dly Footnotes have been positioned below the relevant paragraphs. THE BLACK DEATH IN THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY, FROM THE GERMAN OF I. F. C. HECKER, M. D. PROFESSOR AT FREDERICK WILLIAM’S UNIVERSITY AT BERLIN, AND MEMBER OF VARIOUS LEARNED SOCIETIES IN BERLIN, BONN, COPENHAGEN, ERLANGEN, HANAU, LONDON, LYONS, METZ, NAPLES, NEW YORK, PHILADELPHIA AND ZURICK. TRANSLATED BY B. G. BABINGTON, M. D. LONDON: A. SCHLOSS, FOREIGN BOOKSELLER, 109, STRAND. 1833. CONTENTS. TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE i PREFACE ix CHAPTER I.--General Observations 1 CHAPTER II.--The Disease 4 CHAPTER III.--Causes--Spread 28 CHAPTER IV.--Mortality 54 CHAPTER V.--Moral Effects 82 CHAPTER VI.--Physicians 128 APPENDIX-- I.--The Ancient Song of the Flagellants 172 II.--Trial of the Jews accused of poisoning the Wells 181 III.--Extracts from “A Boke or Counseill against the Sweate or Sweatyng Sicknesse” 191 TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE. In reading Dr. Hecker’s account of the Black Death which destroyed so large a portion of the human race in the fourteenth century, I was struck, not only with the peculiarity of the Author’s views, but also with the interesting nature of the facts which he has collected. Some of these have never before been made generally known, while others have passed out of mind, being effaced from our memories by subsequent events of a similar kind, which, though really of less magnitude and importance, have, in the perspective of time, appeared greater, because they have occurred nearer to our own days.