"Consecrated ground no longer sufficed, and it became [p024] necessary to dig trenches, into which the bodies were put by hundreds, laid in rows as goods packed in a ship; a little earth was cast upon each successive layer until the pits were filled to the top. The adjacent country presented the same picture as the city; the poor distressed labourers and their families, without physicians, and without help, languished on the highways, in the fields, in their own cottages, dying like cattle rather than human beings. The country people, like the citizens, grew dissolute in their manners and careless of everything. They supposed that each day might be their last; and they took no care nor thought how to improve their substance, or even to utilise it for present support. The flocks and herds, when driven from their homes, would wander unwatched through the forsaken harvest fields, and were left to return of their own accord, if they would, at the approach of night." Between March and the July following it was estimated that upwards of a hundred thousand souls had perished in the city alone. "What magnificent dwellings," the writer continues, "what stately palaces, were then rendered desolate, even to the last inhabitant! How many noble families became extinct! What riches, what vast possessions were left with no known heir to inherit them! What numbers of both sexes, in the prime and vigour of youth, whom in the morning Galen, Hippocrates, or Æsculapius himself, would have declared in perfect health, after dining heartily with their friends here, have supped with their departed friends in another world."[24]