contributed to the same effect; vast river districts had been converted into swamps; foul vapours arose every where, increased by the odour of putrified locusts, which had never perhaps darkened the sun in thicker swarms,[37] and of countless corpses, which even in the well-regulated countries of Europe, they knew not how to remove quickly enough out of the sight of the living. It is probable, therefore, that the atmosphere contained foreign, and sensibly perceptible, admixtures to a great extent, which, at least in the lower regions, could not be decomposed, or rendered ineffective by separation. [34] There were also many locusts which had been blown into the sea by a hurricane, and afterwards cast dead upon the shore, and produced a noxious exhalation; and _a dense and awful fog was seen in the heavens, rising in the East, and descending upon Italy_. Mansfeld Chronicle, in _Cyriac Spangenberg_, chap. 287, fol. 336. Eisleben, 1572. Compare _Staind._ Chron. (?) _by Schnurrer_. (“Ingens vapor magnitudine horribili boreali movens, regionem magno adspicientium terrore dilabitur”.) and _Ad. von Lebenwaldt_, Land-Stadt-und Hausarzney-Buch fol. p. 15. Nuremberg, 1695, who mentions a dark, thick mist which covered the earth. _Chalin_ expresses himself on this subject in the following terms:--Coelum ingravescit, _aër impurus sentitur: nubes crassae ac multae luminibus coeli obstruunt, immundus ac ignavus tepor hominum emollit corpora, exoriens sol pallescit_.” p. 50. [35] See Caius’ account of the causes of the sweating sickness, in the Appendix.--_Translator._ [36] _Mezeray_ Histoire de France, Tom. II. 418. Paris, 1685. _V. Oudegheerst's Chroniques de Flandres. Antwerp, 1571, 4to. Chap. 175, f. 297. [37] They spread in a direction from East to West, over most of the countries from which we have received intelligence. Anonym. Leobiens, Chron. Loc. cit. Now, if we go back to the symptoms of the disease, the ardent inflammation of the lungs points out, that the organs of respiration yielded to the attack of an atmospheric poison--a poison, which (if we admit the independent origin of the Black Plague at any one place on the globe, which, under such extraordinary circumstances, it would be difficult to doubt,) attacked the course of the circulation in as hostile a manner as that which produces inflammation of the spleen and other animal contagions that cause swelling and inflammation of the lymphatic glands.