The disease according to his account was incurable. Neither regularity of life nor bodily strength was any preservation against it. The strong and the weak were equally struck down; and death spared not those of whom care was taken, any more than the poor, destitute of all help. No other illness of any sort showed itself in this year; all sickness took the form of the prevalent disease. Medical science recognised that it was powerless before the foe. The course of the malady was not in all cases the same. Some people died suddenly, others during the course of a day, and some after but an hour's suffering. In the case of those who lingered for two or three days the attack commenced with a violent fever. Soon the poison mounted to the brain, and the sufferer lost the use of speech, became insensible to what was taking place about him, and appeared sunk in a deep sleep. If by chance he came to himself and tried to speak [p011] his tongue refused to move, and only a few inarticulate sounds could be uttered, as the nerves had been paralysed; then he died suddenly. Others who fell sick under the disease were attacked first, not in the head, but in the lungs. The organs of respiration became quickly inflamed, sharp pains were experienced in the chest, blood was vomited, and the breath became fetid. The throat and tongue, burnt up by the excessive fever, became black and congested with blood. "Those who drank copiously experienced no more relief than those who drank but little." Then, after describing the terrible sleeplessness and restlessness of some sufferers, and the plague spots which broke out over the body in most cases, the Emperor proceeds:—"The few who recovered had no second attack, or at least not of a serious nature." Even some of those who manifested all the symptoms recovered against every expectation. It is certain that no efficacious remedy has been discovered. What had been useful to one appeared a real poison to another. People who nursed the sick took their malady, and on this account the deaths multiplied to such an extent that many houses remained deserted, after all who had lived in them—even the domestic animals—had been carried off by the plague. The profound discouragement of the sick was specially sad to behold. On the first symptoms of the attack men lost all hope of recovery, and gave themselves up as lost. This moral prostration quickly made them worse and accelerated the hour of their death.