The inflammation of the mucous membrane, no doubt, affected the nervous plexuses of the abdomen, as is usually the case, and totally changed the secretion. This was proved by the treatment, for, by administering the necessary purgative remedies, a vast quantity of offensive mucus, mixed with bile, was evacuated. Our excellent eye-witness assures us that the people sickened as suddenly as if they had inhaled a poisonous blast, so that more than a thousand people in Alkmaar betook themselves to their beds in a single day, a thick stinking mist having previously for several days spread over the land. This pestilence did not terminate so speedily as that of the year 1517; on the contrary, it delayed until the winter, and seems to have formed the conclusion of a whole series of morbid phenomena, particularly of the already mentioned influenza throughout Europe, and of the bubo plague in Holland, which had occurred in the middle of the summer,—phenomena that were accompanied by the usual attendants of epidemics, namely great scarcity, and unusual occurrences in the atmosphere, such, for instance, as electric illuminations of prominent objects, and so forth[490]. The close connexion between this inflammation of the air-passages and gullet and the epidemic catarrh is quite apparent; for these are but gradations and gradual transitions in the affection of the mucous membrane, as also in the power of atmospherical causes, which especially influence the organs of respiration. We believe, therefore, that we are fully justified in classing the epidemic described to have taken place in Holland and Germany in 1517, with the influenzas; and in declaring the morbid commotion in human collective life which thus manifested itself, to have been a forerunner of the English pestilence, which was simultaneously prepared by the altered condition of the atmosphere, and broke out a few months later. We ought not to omit here to mention that, in this same year, 1517, the small-pox, and with it, as field-poppies among corn, the measles, was conveyed by Europeans to Hispaniola, and committed dreadful ravages at that time, as afterwards, among the unfortunate inhabitants. Whether the eruption of these infectious diseases in the new world was favoured by an epidemic influence or not, can no longer be ascertained; yet the affirmative seems probable from the fact, that the small-pox did not commit its greatest ravages in Hispaniola[491] until the following year, and, according to recent experience, those epidemic influences which extend from Europe westward, always require some time to reach the eastern coasts of America.