COMMENTARY. By the plague, as Galen explains in his ‘Commentary on Hippocrates,’ is to be understood an epidemical fever of a fatal nature. Hippocrates has related several histories of diseases which came under this description in his ‘Epidemics,’ but they present such variety of symptoms, that we cannot undertake to give their general characters. It is deserving of remark, however, that he several times makes mention of fevers accompanied with buboes. (Aphor. iv. 54, Epidem. &c.) According to M. Littré, buboes are noticed among the symptoms of plague by Ruffus, and also by Dioscorides and Posidonius in an extract given in the following publication: ‘Classicorum auctorum e Vaticanis codicibus editorum,’ tomus iv, curante Angelo Maio, p. 11, Romæ, 1834. See Littré’s Hippocrates (ii, p. 585.) Aretæus mentions incidentally that pestilential buboes are connected with the liver. (Morb. acut. ii, 3.) Under Sect. XVI will be found several passages from ancient authors, in which pestilential buboes are incidentally mentioned. It must be admitted they are very insufficient materials for illustrating the ancient history of the glandular plague, and it may justly excite surprise that the historian Procopius, in the sixth century, P. C., should be the first writer who has given a complete description of this disease. At the same time we cannot agree with M. Nauman, M. Pariset, and other late writers on the plague, who maintain that the epidemic which devastated the world in the reign of Justinian was a new disease. The frequent mention of pestilential buboes by previous authors, although vague, is sufficient to mark the existence of the disease. In this light, at all events, they are viewed by the commentators on Hippocrates, who lived after the glandular plague was properly described. (See Pallad. Comment. in Hippoc. Ep. t. ii, p. 47, ed. Dietz.)