or later, when they betokened a favourable crisis. Thread-worms, in great numbers, were evacuated alive under great torment, and generally increased the sufferings of the patient. The disease was scarcely less contagious than plague, and with respect to its treatment, bleeding, copious and even ad deliquium, was decidedly successful, which coupled with the attacks on the head just described[527], leads to the conclusion that there existed a fulness of blood and an inflammatory state of circulation, together, perhaps, with inflammation of the brain. We must not omit to observe that, during the pestilence of 1546, the bubo plague made its appearance here and there, especially in the Netherlands[528]; and in the following year, broke out and spread to a greater extent in France[529], whence it seems to follow, with respect to the malady of which we are now treating, that its nature resembled the petechial fever, since that disease usually precedes the occurrence of pestilences[530]. The assertion of historians, that in 1528, and the following years, France lost a fourth part of her inhabitants by famine and pestilence, seems, according to our representation, not to be by any means exaggerated. The consequences, as regarded the future destinies of that country, were likewise very important. For Francis the 1st saw that no new sacrifices could be borne by his people, who were already so sorely afflicted; and therefore abandoned his schemes of greatness and foreign power, consenting, on the 5th of August, 1529, to the disadvantageous treaty of Cambray. SECT. 3.—SWEATING SICKNESS IN ENGLAND, 1528. Whoever, following the above facts, will represent to himself the state of Europe in 1528, will readily believe, that a poisonous atmosphere enveloped this quarter of the globe, and continually brought destruction and death over its nations. Ruin broke in upon them in a thousand forms, destroying their bodies and benighting their minds, and if to this we add the discord and the deadly party hatred which at that time prevailed in the world, it seems as if every circumstance that could affect mankind was implicated in this gigantic conflict, which threatened in its fatal result to annihilate all traces of the times that were past.