FROM A.D. 1418 TO 1530.
A.D. 1418, Strasburgh was visited by the ‘Dancing Plague,’
and the same infatuation existed amongst the people there, as in the
towns of Belgium and the Lower Rhine A.D. 1374; many who were
seized on seeing the affected, excited attention at first by their
confused and absurd behaviour, and then by their constantly following
the swarms of dancers. These were seen day and night passing through
the streets, accompanied by musicians playing on bagpipes, and by
innumerable spectators attracted by curiosity, to whom were added
anxious parents and relations who came to look after those among the
misguided multitude who belonged to their respective families.
Imposture and profligacy played their part in this city also, but the
morbid delusion itself seems to have predominated. On this account
religion could only bring provisional aid, and therefore the Town
Council benevolently took an interest in the afflicted: they divided
them into separate parties, to each of which they appointed responsible
superintendents, to protect them from harm, and perhaps also to
restrain their turbulence. They were thus conducted on foot and in
carriages to the chapels of St. Vitus, near Zabern, and Rotestein,
where priests were in attendance to influence their misguided minds
by masses and other religious ceremonies. After divine worship was
completed, they were led in solemn procession to the altar, where they
made some small offering of alms, and where, it is probable, many,
through the influence of devotion and the sanctity of the place, were
cured of this lamentable aberration.
It is worthy of observation, at all events, that the dancing mania
did not recommence at the altars of the saint, that from him alone
assistance was implored, and that through his miraculous interposition
a cure was expected, which was beyond the reach of human skill. The
personal history of St. Vitus is by no means unimportant in this
matter. He was a Sicilian youth, who, together with Modestus and
Crescentia, suffered martyrdom at the time of the persecution of
the Christians under Diocletian, in A.D. 303. The legends
respecting him are obscure, and he would certainly have been passed
over without notice among the innumerable apocryphal martyrs of the
earliest centuries, had not the transfer of his body to St. Denys, and
thence in the year 836 to Corvey, raised him to a higher rank. From
this time forth it may be supposed that many miracles were performed at
his new sepulchre, which were of essential service in confirming the
Roman Catholic faith among the Germans, and St. Vitus was soon ranked
among the fourteen saintly helpers (Nothelfer or Apotheker). His altars
were multiplied, and the people had recourse to them in all kinds of
distresses; they revered him as a powerful intercessor. As the worship
of these saints was, however, at that time stripped of all historical
connexions, which were purposely obliterated by the priesthood, a
legend was invented at the beginning of the fifteenth century, or
perhaps even so early as the fourteenth, that St. Vitus had, just
before he bent his neck to the sword, prayed to God that he might
protect from the dancing mania all those who should solemnize the day
of his commemoration and fast upon its eve, and that thereupon a voice
from heaven was heard, saying, “Vitus, thy prayer is accepted.” Thus
St. Vitus became the patron saint of those affected with the dancing
plague, as St. Martin of Tours was at one time the succourer of persons
in small-pox; St. Anthony, of those suffering under the ‘hellish fire;’
and as St. Margaret was the Juno Lucina of pregnant women.
A.D. 1426, the Baltic was frozen over, and on the 28th of
September a severe earthquake was felt in England. Dantzic was visited
by pestilence and famine; and the year following, England suffered from
epidemic pestilence, and a severe earthquake, which occurred on the
14th of July.
A.D. 1429, epidemic pestilence prevailed at Barcelona, as
is proved by the donation of £8 and 16 sueldos, which were paid to a
chaplain for his labour in removing for burial the dead bodies found in
the churches and elsewhere.
A.D. 1434, there was a severe frost in England, which lasted
from the 24th of November to the 10th of February in the following year.
This year, 1436, the seasons were inclement and rainy, and there was
a dearth of corn in various parts of Europe. Epidemic coughs, small
pox, and fevers swept away many thousands from the face of the earth.
The moisture which existed during the preceding year in Spain, was
excessive; it did not cease raining and snowing in Castile from the
29th of October, 1434, to the 7th of January in the following year,
1435.
Four years after, 1439, the city Huesca, in the kingdom of Aragon,
suffered from such a cruel pestilence, that, following the credulity
of the times, Alonso de Burgos says in his Treatise on Plague, “that
the disease in Huesca only yielded to a solemn and general vow which
the city made, to celebrate a feast on the day of the Conception of the
Virgin, and to observe its vigil with an absolute fast.”
A.D. 1438, there was a famine in England. During a storm on
the 25th of November a heavy gust of wind blew off the leads of the
Grey Friars Church, in London, and almost beat down the whole side of a
street called the Old Exchange.
A.D. 1441. During this year, brother Diego de Herrera
complained of an itching, or leprosy, all over his body: the physicians
declared the disease to be communicable, and obliged him to live
outside the monastery of Mejorada--a fact showing that this disease had
existed previously in Spain, and that the physicians were acquainted
with its characters. These observations are to be found in the life of
the illustrious Senhor Don Diego de Anaya, Archbishop of Granada.
A.D. 1443, there was a severe frost in England from the
14th of November until the 10th of February in the following year.
A thunder-storm with severe lightning did much damage to St. Paul’s
Church and to that of Waltham Cross; they were fired by the lightning
on Candlemas day. From about this period until 1450, famine and
pestilence were destructive to millions of the human race, especially
in Italy, Gaul, Germany, Asia, and Spain. About the same date, King Don
Alonso of Aragon, surnamed the Wise, conquered the kingdom of Naples.
The great obstacles which presented themselves before accomplishing the
subjugation of the provinces of Abruzzo, coupled with the sufferings
caused by a protracted and desperate war, subjected the numerous
cavalry employed in the service to attacks of disease. Great numbers
of their horses died from a particular kind of epizootic. This great
mortality caused the king to order his major domo, one Manuel Diaz,
to call together all the veterinary surgeons of his cavalry and the
surgeons of the infantry, in order that they should compose a work on
farriery--thus giving rise to the renewal of that most useful art, as
noted in the Spanish Hippiatria, or Veterinary of Spain.
A.D. 1446, the sea broke down the dykes at Dort, in Holland,
on the 17th of April, and drowned 100,000 persons.
A.D. 1448. “Owing to the heavy rains of the previous year,
1447,” says Martinez de Leiva, “a severe pestilence prevailed,
which was attributed to the excess of moisture, conjoined with the
unprecedented heat:” it was rife in various parts of Spain. On the 11th
of October, public prayers were offered up at Barcelona on account
of this pestilence and of other calamities, such as earthquakes, &c.
During this year great mortality occurred in the army of King Alonso
V., encamped in the neighbourhood of Pomblein.
A.D. 1450, in the month of June, a pestilence broke out
in the city of Saragossa. Zurita, who in his Annals of Aragon gives
an account of this pestilence, specifies but little, although it is
known to have raged for some time, and to have extended to Barcelona,
where it continued for two years after (1452). On the Sabbath, the
22nd of April, the authorities of this city, Barcelona, despatched
a state-messenger to the monasteries of Saint Gerónimo de la Murta,
of the district of Ebro, de Monte Alegre, de Poblet, de Santa Cruce,
and de Escala Dei, to solicit the brethren to implore the Almighty to
relieve them from the sore pestilence with which the city was visited.
On the 13th of June of this year, the Queen Donna Maria retired, with
her Court, from the city, for fear of the pestilence.
A.D. 1456. There were two comets observed this year: three
years after, 1459, the Baltic was so frozen over, that people travelled
on the ice from Denmark to Lubeck, Wismar, Rostock, and Stralsund.
A.D. 1465, pestilence again visited Italy. On the 6th of
December of this year, the brothers Miguel Capelier and Leonardo
Crestia, of the order of St. Francis of the Convent of Jesus, were
deputed by the corporation of the city of Barcelona to implore the
interposition of the Almighty to free the city from pestilence. The
year following, Cadiz was nearly depopulated by a plague. Other parts
of Spain suffered also from epidemic pestilence; so much so, that on
the 7th of January, 1466, the Council of Ciento voted that the Feast of
St. Sebastian should not be observed, on account of the epidemic which
was raging at Barcelona. Further, on Thursday, the 13th, the Council
of Thirty-two determined that an image of the guardian angel should
be erected; and on the 17th of November following there was a solemn
procession ordered.
A.D. 1468, epidemic pestilence raged at Parma.
A.D. 1471, Pope Sextus erected a brothel at Rome, and the
Roman prostitutes paid him a weekly tax, which amounted to 20,000
ducats a year.
A.D. 1472, a comet was seen. The year following, 1473,
excessive heat and drought prevailed, which persisted for three years.
About this period, 1474, the city of Valencia suffered from a severe
epidemic. Luis Alcanyis, a famous Valencian physician, published a
treatise in the Limosin language (that of the Troubadours), without
giving either the place of printing or the year of publication; but
it seems that he flourished about this period (1474), and that his
treatise was written in consequence of the epidemic under notice:
it was entitled, ‘Regiment preservatiu é curatiu de la Pestilencia,
compost per Mestre Luis Alcanyis, Mestre en Medicina.’
A.D. 1475–76, the Danube was fordable in Hungary, and swarms
of locusts destroyed all vegetation there and in Poland. The second
pestilence, which devastated the island of Mallorca, according to the
authority of Don Vincente Mut, occurred. A Board of Health was formed
by the governor of Mallorca, Don Berengario Blanels, in order to
prescribe rules for government and remedial measures. This ‘Morbeira,’
or Board of Health, was composed of a magistrate, a knight, a
physician, a surgeon, a tradesman, and a merchant. Quarantine for forty
days was established. In this year there was published a work entitled
‘De Epidemiâ et Peste, Magistri Vallestii Tarentini, Artium Medicinæque
Doctoris eximii,’ which was translated by Dr. Juan Villar into the
Castilian language. In the latter year (1476), the Council of One
Hundred ordered an imprecatory chapel to be consecrated at St. Roque,
in consequence of the prevalence of a terrible plague at Barcelona,
which lasted from the 27th of March until the 13th of November. On the
13th of July in the same year, a solemn procession took place, in which
were exhibited the bodies of St. Severus and St. Innocent.
A.D. 1477, in the reign of their Catholic majesties Don
Fernando de Aragon and Doña Isabel de Castilla, there broke out a
wretched pestilence of leprosy, which may be said to have prevailed
epidemically, so numerous were the cases. The duty of examining those
affected, and of expelling them from the cities and villages, was a
task exclusively imposed on the priests, in accordance with divine
authority, as laid down in Leviticus chap. xiii. Epidemic pestilence,
attended with bubo, prevailed in Italy, and raged without interruption
until 1485. Swarms of locusts committed great ravages in various parts
of the South of Europe, from the year 1478 until 1482. Within this
period, say in the years 1480 and 1481, malignant epidemics appeared
in the train of drought and famine in Switzerland and Germany; while
putrid fever, accompanied by phrenitis, prevailed in Westphalia, Hesse,
and Friesland. There never had been, in the memory of the inhabitants
of these places, so many _ignes fatui_ as during this period. The
harvests also failed, rendering it necessary to obtain supplies of
provisions from Thuringia.
A.D. 1482, France, under the fearful reign of Louis XI., after
two years of scarcity, became the scene of a devastating plague: it
raged in the form of an inflammatory fever, with delirium, accompanied
by such intense cephalalgia, that many are reported to have dashed out
their brains against the walls of their houses, or to have rushed into
the water.
A.D. 1483, there was so great an inundation in
Gloucestershire, that all the country round about was overflowed, and
many persons were drowned in their beds. The waters did not abate
for ten days,--thus preventing the Duke of Buckingham from passing
the river into Wales to join the Welsh, who had risen against King
Richard III., and consequently being indirectly the cause of the duke’s
misfortunes and of his violent death. Barcelona was again visited by
a pestilence, which lasted upwards of a year. The river Severn in
England overflowed; epidemic pestilence was the consequence. During
the following years, 1484–85, it extended all over England, having
first broken out at Shrewsbury, where, according to the testimony of
Dr. Caius, who resided in that town, 960 died in a few days. Some
authorities have spoken of this pestilence as having occurred under
circumstances extremely favourable to the generation of a malignant
disease, for it is said to have first appeared in the army of the Earl
of Richmond, afterwards King Henry VII., upon his landing at Milford
Haven in 1485. This army consisted of foreign troops, brought over
in crowded transport-vessels. They were described by a contemporary
historian, Philip de Comines, as the most wretched soldiery he ever
beheld, collected, it is probable, from jails and hospitals, and
buried in filth. The disease soon spread to London, where it raged
from the beginning of August to the end of October, having assumed a
particular type: it was termed ‘sudor Anglicus,’ or sweating sickness,
and proved to be a mortal epidemic. It also prevailed in Ireland. The
symptoms were those of a violent inflammatory fever, which, after a
short time, caused great prostration of strength. There were also
present, oppression at the stomach, and violent headache, accompanied
by lethargic stupor, and the body was covered with a profuse fœtid
perspiration. The progress of this singular malady was very rapid, a
crisis always taking place within the space of a day and a night. The
internal heat from which the patient suffered was intolerable, yet
every thing cold, or even cool, was certain death. Two lord mayors and
six aldermen died in one week. The disease attacked the most robust and
strong, and spread without interruption over the entire kingdom, from
east to west. In a very short period vast numbers of the population
fell victims to this strange epidemic. Many of those who recovered from
the first attack were seized a second, and some even a third time.
Persons of rank, of the ecclesiastical and civil classes, were not
exempt; and great was the consternation when the disease broke out in
Oxford. The heads of colleges and the students fled in all directions,
and this celebrated university was deserted for six weeks. Three months
later, it appeared at Croyland, and carried off Lambert Fossedyke,
abbot of the monastery, on the 14th of November. During this period,
epidemic pestilence was rife in Germany, Switzerland, Sweden, Denmark,
and Egypt.
A.D. 1485. This year, pestilence broke out in Seville, the
mortality from which was increased by the heavy rains and inundations
of the subsequent winter. The year following, Saragossa and other parts
of the kingdom of Aragon suffered from epidemic pestilence: it was of
a peculiar bubonic or glandular kind, the cure of which was attributed
to the intercession of Santo Pedro Arbues, one of the first Grand
Inquisitors of Spain, murdered by the populace for his cruelties, and
afterwards canonized by the papacy.
A.D. 1488, pestilence prevailed in Andalusia, which must
have been very fatal, especially in the army which King Don Ferdinand
commanded, although no correct accounts of its mortality are on record.
In the year 1489, Barcelona was again visited by a dire pestilence:
it broke out on the 3rd of November, and lasted until the 16th of
September in the following year. In vol. i. of the ‘Biblioteca Halleri’
there is a memoir published by Pedro Martyr de Anglesia, in which is
noted a certain disease accompanied by a pain in the joints, fœtid
ulcers in the mouth, and pustules, which are regarded by some modern
writers as the symptoms of the French pox (morbus Gallicus).
A.D. 1490, a bilious remittent fever was rife in various parts
of Europe. A putrid fever, supposed by some to have arisen from the
unburied bodies in Granada, raged with dreadful violence; by others it
was stated to have been imported by some soldiers who came from the
island of Cyprus, in which place this kind of fever was endemic.
A.D. 1492. Epidemic variola was unknown to the Indians until
it was conveyed to the East by the commercial intercourse of the Dutch:
it was also supposed to have been introduced into America by a negro
slave of Pamfilo Narvaes, when that Spanish general proceeded to Mexico
against his enemy, Hernando Cortés. The inhabitants of Zempoala lost
great numbers, and 16,000 Indians fell its victims.
In the year 1493, says Don Vincente Mut, there happened the fifth
plague in the island of Mallorca; it was called the plague of Boja,
and was so termed from the name of the man who is supposed to have
introduced it into the island.
During this period, Barcelona was revisited by pestilence, which
lasted from the 13th of June until the 4th of October. That the
venereal disease was not introduced from America into Europe this
year, by means of the troops of Admiral Christobal Colon, is a point
which has been already demonstrated in history. Astruc exhibits great
erudition in showing that the disease was not known before the years
1494 and 1496. In the list of writers of the kingdom of Valencia,
furnished by Vincente Ximeno, we learn that a Pedro Pintor was born
in that capital A.D. 1420, and died at Rome in 1503: he was
physician to Alexander the Sixth, who was also a Valencian, having
been born in the part called Xativa. From the historical writings of
Pintor, and of contemporary authors, it seems evident, as suggested by
Dr. Sanchez, that the venereal disease, during its first prevalence,
was a pestilential fever, which was communicable through the genitals,
and otherwise; and that at that period there was no discredit or stigma
attached to those who were afflicted with it: it was not considered to
be _contra bonos mores_. The Valencian author, following up the
astrological notions of his time, attributes the disease to the same
causes as epidemic plagues or pestilences.
During the vernal equinox of this year, this description of pestilence
broke out in the city of Rome, as is gathered from the following
quotation: “Talis autem epidemia in urbe Romanâ contigit anno 1493
mense Martii, post introitum solis in primum minutum Arietis.” This
disease was first noticed in the month of August.
Pedro Pintor, according to Cotunnius, professor of anatomy at Naples,
was amongst the earliest writers upon the venereal disease: his work,
entitled ‘De Morbo Fœdo his temporibus affligente,’ was published at
Rome A.D. 1500. He attributed the origin of the disease to a
conjunction of the planets, and no doubt he was acquainted with the
circumstance of the disease being propagated by cohabitation with a
diseased person. Several of the inhabitants of Rome were attacked
A.D. 1493, and the disease became common there until 1499; it
principally attacked the limbs with excruciating pains and pustular
eruptions, against which the physicians employed mercurial ointment
mixed with lead,--an invention said to be due to a Portuguese. So rife
did the pestilence become, that, according to Ruy Diaz de Isla, a
native of Andalusia, their majesties Don Fernando de Aragon and Doña
Isabel de Castilla gave instructions to their physicians to attend to
those stricken with the disease, who were received into the hospital of
San Salvador. Great numbers of the first professors and physicians of
the land investigated the symptoms of the disease, and after treating
it with the thousand and one remedies thought of with but little
success, it was considered to be a chastisement from Heaven which befel
all constitutions and conditions.
With reference to the origin of this pestilence--the venereal disease,
there are various opinions. When it broke out in the French army
at Naples A.D. 1495, the French called it ‘the disease of
Naples,’ and said that at the siege of that place there were certain
merchants who barrelled the flesh of men slain in Barbary, which they
sold for tunny! and that from such food the disease originated. It is
certain that cannibals are much infested with the venereal disease.
It was known in England before 1162, and was called ‘Brenning’ or
‘Burning.’ This appears from Bishop Winton’s records of the public
stews. The disease is well described by one Arden, who was surgeon to
Richard II., in 1156, in a work expressly written on the subject.
A.D. 1495, King Don Fernando convoked the Cortes in the city
of Tarragona, in consequence of the pestilence raging at Saragossa: it
was attended by buboes, carbuncles, &c.; and in the following year,
1496, it appeared in a petechial form among the soldiers employed
in Granada. Syphilis also prevailed at Naples amongst the troops of
Charles VIII.
In the year 1496, an epidemic ulceration, as it was then called, of the
skin (epidemic scurvy), invaded the inhabitants of Germany, Portugal,
Ireland, and other countries.
A.D. 1497, Barcelona was again visited by epidemic
pestilence: it made its appearance about the 18th of July, and
continued until November. Gaspar Torella, a native of Valencia,
physician and domestic prelate to Alexander VI., wrote a work upon
the Morbus Gallicus, which was printed at Rome, according to Haller’s
account, in the year 1497. Astruc makes mention of another work,
entitled ‘Ex Coitu cum Impurâ Muliere.’
In the year 1498, Francisco Lopez de Villalobos, physician to Charles
V. and to his son Philip II., published in Salamanca a folio work
entitled ‘Sumario de la Medicina.’ Juan de Banos, in the first ten
numbers of his ‘Voyages of the Portuguese to the East Indies,’ gives
a circumstantial account of a pestilence which seized on the crews of
their fleet after they had passed the Cape of Good Hope. The malady
commenced with erysipelas and putrescence of the gums, so that those
who were attacked were unable to take food; their bodies were racked
with excruciating pains, and the stench from them was intolerable. This
disease was evidently scurvy.
A.D. 1499, a great plague prevailed in Britain, carrying off
thousands; 30,000 were reported to have perished from it in London
alone. The king found it advisable to retire with all his Court to
Calais. In Brussels, epidemic pestilence victimized daily 500 persons;
mould-spots (signacula) were observed in Germany and in France. There
was a great mortality from murrain in cattle in Germany, and very
extensive destruction of all vegetation by blights and caterpillars.
The inhabitants of both France and Germany suffered greatly from severe
epidemic disease during this period; it assumed a glandular form, and
continued until the year 1503. This pestilence, says Schenckius, was
accompanied in some parts of Europe by famine, which was followed by
a most vehement intemperature of the seasons; for a winter preceded,
so terribly severe as to kill the brute creation everywhere, and the
heat of the summer was of such cruel intensity that trees were set on
fire by the heat of the sun: in fine, this year may be said to have
been the commencement of a century of putrid malignant diseases,--a
century replete with grand phenomena affecting human life in general.
In the year 1501, epidemic pestilence, says Luis Lobera de Avila, made
its appearance at Barcelona; it began about the middle of October, and
spread to various other parts of Spain. The disease, according to the
superstition of the times, was attributed to a celestial influence.
During this period, the use of guaiacum, or holy wood, in the treatment
of the venereal disease, was discovered: it was afterwards introduced
into Italy about the year 1517, where its utility was first made known
by a Spanish presbyter. Plague again visited Barcelona, and sadly
crippled its commerce. The viceroy of Sicily prohibited the entry of
shipping coming thence.
In the year 1504, China was nearly depopulated by pestilence. There was
also a great mortality in Ireland from epidemic disease; and plague,
about the same period, raged in Spain, in which country a severe
earthquake was experienced on the 5th of April: it did a great deal of
mischief, especially in Andalusia. About the same period a dreadful
shock was felt at Lisbon, which continued for eight days, overthrowing
several churches and more than 1500 houses, under the ruins of which
upwards of 20,000 persons met their death. Several of the neighbouring
towns were swallowed up, with vast numbers of their inhabitants. The
year following, two comets were observed. Spotted fever was rife all
over Europe, and pestilence prevailed in Lisbon.
In the summer of the year 1505, the sweating sickness again reared
its head in England; the disease first broke out in London: it was
of a much milder form than that which prevailed in the year 1485; it
disappeared towards the close of the autumn, and appears to have been
confined to England: no remarkable phenomena were observed here during
this pestilence; it was otherwise, however, in other parts of Europe.
The summer was wet, and the winter following a severe one; comets were
seen in this and the following year, and an eruption of Vesuvius took
place.
A.D. 1506. From the 15th to the 26th of January, there blew
a violent storm from the south-west, which drove the King of Castile,
Philip of Austria, with his consort Joanna, from the Netherlands to
Weymouth; and as, some days before, a golden eagle falling from St.
Paul’s Church in London had crushed a black eagle which ornamented some
lower building, evil predictions were promulgated among the people
respecting the fate of this son of the Emperor.
Spain suffered greatly from severe pestilence in the year 1507, writes
Don Miguel Martinez de Leyva,--especially Barcelona, which place may
be said to have been scarcely ever free of pestilence. In the diary of
Ramon Vila it is stated that the pestilence was at its height in the
months of April, May, June, and July. On the 14th of August letters
were addressed to the governors of Sicily and Mallorca, informing
them that, in consequence of the cessation of the pestilence at
Barcelona, the royal family and the nobility had returned to the city.
The Portuguese physician Pedro Bayro, who had had much experience in
foreign parts, and of whom Don Nicolas Antonio makes memorable mention,
wrote a work entitled ‘Novum ac perutile Opusculum de Pestilentiâ et
de Curatione ejusdem per utrumque regimen, præservativum, scilicet,
et curativum. Turin, 1507.’ In this and the following year, 1508,
mention is made of swarms of locusts in the neighbourhood of Seville;
in fact, they are reported to have overrun Spain. Epidemic pestilence
followed, especially at Cadiz. Constantinople was nearly depopulated
by pestilence, which spared neither age nor sex. Germany also suffered
from epidemic encephalitis and malignant pneumonia.
A.D. 1510, a violent and universal catarrh prevailed over
Europe; in France it was called ‘Coqueluche’ (monk’s-hood), from the
practice of covering the patient’s head with a cap to protect him
from the air, which was considered very detrimental in this disease.
So general was the malady in France, that historians assure us that
but few of the inhabitants escaped.--A.D. 1511 a plague, and
1513 a malignant dysentery occurred in Verona.--A.D. 1515,
Spain was revisited by epidemic pestilence. A severe earthquake was
felt in Denmark, which threw down the steeple of the great church in
Copenhagen, and did much damage besides.
The sweating sickness again made its appearance, A.D. 1517,
in England, having broken out in London, which was crowded with
poor. From a scarcity of artizans about this time, it happened that
great numbers of foreigners emigrated from Genoa, Lombardy, France,
Germany, and Holland to London, and were engaged in the most lucrative
branches of employment. This circumstance appears to have increased
the prevalent distresses of the lower orders, and a great insurrection
of English artizans followed. The popular commotion was, however,
soon suppressed without any considerable damage; and Henry VIII., on
a solemn day appointed at Westminster for passing judgment upon the
prisoners apprehended on the occasion of the riots, bestowed pardon on
them, for he saw into the causes of their discontent, and very soon
after caused restrictive alien laws to be enacted. The higher classes
enjoyed no immunity from this pestilence; their ranks were thinned,
and no precaution seemed to avert death from their abodes. Ammonius
of Lucca, a scholar of some celebrity, private secretary to the king,
was cut off, after having boasted to Sir Thomas More, only a few hours
before his death, that by moderation and good management he had secured
both his family and himself from disease. Lords Grey and Clinton fell
victims to this malady, as did many knights, courtiers, and officers.
So rapid and violent was this disease in its course, that it carried
off those who were attacked in two or three hours, so that the first
shivering fit was the announcement of death; many who were in good
health at noon-day were corpses by the evening. This disease arrived at
its height about seven weeks after its first appearance, and continued
its ravages for six months. Many learned men at Oxford and Cambridge
were carried off by this terrible disease, at a time, too, when the
sciences were much cultivated and were flourishing. The town of Calais
was visited, and, what was very remarkable, none but the English
residents there suffered; the Frenchmen enjoyed an immunity from the
disease, which did not even spread to any other part of France,--at
least there is no account of its having done so. This same year Germany
was visited by a brain fever--an epidemic encephalitis. An earthquake
caused great destruction in Suabia. Another disease of much more
importance appeared in Holland, lasting only eleven days,--an epidemic
œsophagitis (diphtherite) it was considered to be, and from its
dangerous and inexplicable symptoms it spread terror and horror around;
it was so malignant and rapid in its course, that unless assistance was
procured within the first eight hours, the patient was past all hope
of recovery before the close of the day. Sudden pains in the throat,
with violent oppression about the region of the heart, threatened
suffocation, and at length actually produced it. From the journal of
Tyengius it would appear that this epidemic extended towards the south,
and in the same summer appeared at Basle, when in the space of eight
months it destroyed 2000 persons. Small-pox raged with great mortality
at this time in Hispaniola.
A.D. 1518. Marselio Ficino, in his work on the plague,
written according to Haller in 1518, describes the treatment that was
adopted, consisting chiefly in the application of cupping-glasses below
the carbuncles. In the city of Cascante, in the kingdom of Navarre,
there broke out an epizootic, which caused great destruction among
the horses of the regiments quartered there; the principal feature
of the pestilence was extensive apostemes on the head and throat,
attended with an insatiable thirst and hectic fever. About the period
of the earthquakes which were experienced in Xativa A.D.
1517, epidemic disease prevailed in many parts of Spain: it extended
subsequently to the city of Valencia, and caused great mortality in
1519. The public authorities, because of the general prevalence of
disease and the consequent mortality, withdrew to Murviedro.
A.D. 1521, in June, rogatory prayers were offered up in
consequence of the dreadful pestilence which ravaged Barcelona. The
plague raged at Dresden also.
The last plague of Mallorca, of which notice is taken by Don Vincente
Mut, occurred in the year 1523. Great numbers were carried off by it.
The city of Valencia also suffered from a similar pestilence, which was
attributed to atmospheric poison. The year following, 1524, a bubonic
pestilence, as it was termed, raged with great fierceness, and carried
off 50,000 of the inhabitants of Milan. The plague was also rife in
the city of Xativa, and the greatest pestilence from which the city of
Seville ever suffered, occurred about this time, and persisted for some
years.
A.D. 1525, the sweating sickness, which had been for some
time raging in England, extended to other parts of Europe, and in the
course of five years spread over Lower Germany, the Low Countries,
Holland, Zealand, Brabant, Flanders, Denmark, Norway, and France. So
rapid was this disease, that on making its appearance in any place, it
would seize on 600 and upwards in a day, while of this number, when
so seized, rarely more than six recovered, so destructive was it. The
distemper was generally supposed to have been caused by some poisonous
quality of the atmosphere.
A.D. 1527, mention is made by Franco of a pestilence which
broke out at Xativa. Great numbers of the Imperial army of Italy were
destroyed by pestilence after the sacking of Rome; it also carried
off thousands at Wurtemburg. Hailstorms were prevalent about this
period in Italy. Cardinal Gastaldi relates that, in the following
year, 1528, the kingdom of Aragon was visited by severe plague, the
cause of which was superstitiously attributed to the ringing of the
great bell of Velilla.[1] Deadly fevers were rife in London, which,
in the autumn, degenerated into sweating sickness: it invaded Cork,
in Ireland, and Italy also. From this period (1528) until 1534, there
was experienced much suffering from famine, preceded by moisture and
great heat: repeated inundations occurred, and continuous summer fogs
prevailed in Italy. Petechial fevers were very destructive: the French
army before Naples lost great numbers from spotted fevers. The ‘trousse
galante’ carried off, it is said, a fourth part of the population of
France during this period: this disease was attributed to elemental
disturbances; the spring was cold, and the summer wet, so that the
growing corn was destroyed, and a dire famine was the consequence
throughout France, it being more distressing than the period of
scarcity in the time of Louis XI. on account of its long persistence;
for the failure of the harvest continued for five years in succession,
during which period all natural order of the seasons appeared to be
reversed. A damp heat prevailed in the autumn and in winter. The course
of all vegetation was changed; scarcely had the trees shed their leaves
in autumn, when they began to bud again and the fruit-trees to bear
blossoms. The disease was a highly inflammatory fever, which proved
fatal in a very short time, very frequently in the space of a few
hours. In many cases of those who recovered, the hair and the nails
dropped off, and convalescence was tedious, leaving the constitution
much shaken. These symptoms were evidently the same as those observed
in what was termed the ‘Dandy fever,’ which prevailed in later times
in France and in the West India Islands in the year 1828. During this
period drought, swarms of locusts, and fiery meteors were observed in
the north of Germany.
A.D. 1529, epidemic pestilence prevailed and carried off
many distinguished persons in England. Contemporaries agree in their
accounts of the dreadful weather all over Europe; the winter, however,
was mild, and vegetation particularly advanced; violets were gathered
at Erfurt in the middle of February: throughout the spring and summer
wet weather continued to prevail; constant torrents of rain deluged
the fields, and misery and famine spread in every direction. A heavy
rain of four days’ continuance in the south of Germany, in June,
was called the ‘St. Vitus’ Torrent,’ and was considered a hitherto
unheard-of event; whole districts were under water, and many perished
therefrom. An universal storm occurred again in August, occasioning
great floods, especially in Thuringia and Saxony: the sun was rarely
seen through the dark clouds during the latter part of summer and
the whole of the autumn: with the exception of some suffocatingly
hot days, the weather remained gloomy, cold, and wet, so that the
people fancied they were breathing the foggy air of Britain. Violent
remittent pestilence appeared in Amsterdam: Tyengius describes it as
having broken out on the 20th of September, in the afternoon, during
a misty foggy state of the atmosphere: it committed great ravages
for the period of five days, when it disappeared as suddenly as it
arose. In various parts of the German States the birds of the air
became diseased; in the neighbourhood of Freyburg, in the Breisgau,
they were found dead in great numbers, scattered under the trees, with
boils as large as peas under their wings, indicating a disease that
no doubt extended far beyond the Rhine. The river fish, from some
cause, became unfit for food, and the sweating sickness broke out
at Hamburgh, where it destroyed daily from forty to sixty persons.
This pestilence lasted about a fortnight at Hamburgh, and 2000 of its
inhabitants fell its victims: it afterwards spread all over Germany;
it prevailed at Lubeck, Stettin, and in Zwickau. Earthquakes were
experienced in Italy; blood-coloured rain fell at Cremona; a comet was
seen in July; and disease prevailed among the porpoises in the Baltic.
The famine in Germany this year is described by various authorities
as being frightful. Suabia, Lorraine, Alsace, and the southern
districts bordering on the Rhine suffered especially: in those places
the misery was equal to that in France. In the Venetian territory,
thousands perished from hunger, as was the case all over Upper Italy.
In Pomerania, a peculiar kind of debility or lassitude affected the
inhabitants: in the midst of their work, and without any conceivable
cause, persons became palsied in their hands and feet, rendering them
incapable of any exertion. About this period a pestilence, which was
called ‘the English disease,’ broke out at Brussels, and carried off
many of its inhabitants.