XLIII. CHAP. thrown down without injury to the inhabitant; and the Peruvians had reason to deride the folly of their Spanish conquerors, who with fo much coft and labour erected their own fepulchres. The rich marbles of a patrician are dashed on his own head: a whole people is buried under the ruins of public and private edifices, and the conflagration is kindled and propagated by the innumerable fires which are neceffary for the fubfiftence and manufactures of a great city. Instead of the mutual fympathy which might comfort and affist the distreffed, they dreadfully experience the vices and paffions which are released from the fear of punishment: the tottering houses are pillaged by intrepid avarice; revenge embraces the moment, and selects the victim; and the earth often fwallows the affaffin or the ravisher in the confummation of their crimes. Superstition involves the prefent danger with invisible terrors; and if the image of death may fometimes be fubfervient to the virtue or repentance of individuals, an affrighted people is more forcibly moved to expect the end of the world, or to deprecate with fervile homage the wrath of an avenging Deity. III. Æthiopia and Egypt have been stigmatised in every age, as the original fource and feminary of the plague. In a damp, hot, ftagnating air, this African fever is generated from the putrefaction of animal substances, and especially from the fwarms of locufts, not lefs -deftructive to mankind in their death than in their lives. The fatal 87 I have read with pleasure Mead's fhort but elegant treatise concerning Peftilential Disorders, the viiith edition, London, 1722. disease ₹ XLIII. disease which depopulated the earth in the time of CHAP. 88 The great plague which raged in 542 and the following years (Pagi, Critica, tom. ii. p. 518.), must be traced in Procopius (Perfic. 1. ii, c. 22, 23.), Agathias (1. v. p. 153, 154.), Evagrius (1. iv. c. 29.), Paul Diaconus (1. ii. c. 4. p. 776, 777.), Gregory of Tours (tom. ii. l. iv. c. 5. p. 205.) who ftyles it Lues Inguinaria, and the Chronicles of Victor Tunnunenfis (p. 9. in Thefaur. Temporum), of Marcellinus (p 54-), and of Theophanes (p. 153). 89 Dr Friend (Hift. Medicin. in Opp. p. 416–420. Lond: 1733) is fatisfied that Procopius must have studied phyfic from his knowledge and use of the technical words. Yet many words that are now fcientific, were common and popular in the Greek idiom. 9o See Thucydides, 1, ii. c. 47–54. P. 127—133. edit. Duket, and the poetical description of the fame plague by Lucretius (1. vi. 136-1284.). I was indebted to Dr. Hunter for an elaborate commentary on this part of Thucydides, a quarto of 600 pages (Venet. 1603, apud Juntas), which was pronounced in St Mark`s library by Fabius Paullinus Ütinenfis, a phyfician and philosopher. XLIII. CHAP. neither the pulfe nor the colour of the patient gave any figns of the approaching danger. The fame, the next, or the fucceeding day, it was declared by the fwelling of the glands, particularly thofe of the groin, of the arm-pits, and under the ear; and when these buboes or tumours were opened, they were found to contain a coal, or black subftance, of the fize of a lentil. If they came to a juft fwelling and fuppuration, the patient was faved by this kind and natural discharge of the morbid humour. But if they continued hard and dry, a mortification quickly enfued, and the fifth day was commonly the term of his life. The fever was often accompanied with lethargy or delirium; the bodies of the fick were covered with black puftules or carbuncles, the fymptoms of immediate death; and in the conftitutions too feeble to produce an eruption, the vomiting of blood was followed by a mortification of the bowels. To pregnant women the plague was generally mortal: yet one infant was drawn alive from his dead mother, and three mothers furvived the lofs of their infected foetus. Youth was the most perilous feafon; and the female fex was lefs suf ceptible than the male: but every rank and profeffion was attacked with indifcriminate rage, and many of those who efcaped were deprived of the ufe of their speech, without being fecure from a return of the disorder". The physicians of Conftanti gr Thucydides (c. 51.) affirms that the infection could only be once taken; but Evagrius, who had family experience of the plague, obferves, that fome perfons who bad efcaped the firft, funk under the fecond XLIII. ftantinople were zealous and fkilful: but their art CHAP. was baffled by the various fymptoms and pertinacious vehemence of the difeafe: the fame remedies were productive of contrary effects, and the event capriciously disappointed their prognoftics of death or recovery. The order of funerals, and the right of fepulchres, were confounded; thofe who were left without friends or fervants lay unburied in the streets or in their defolate houses; and a magiftrate was authorized to collect the promifcuous heaps of dead bodies, to transport them by land or water, and to inter them in deep pits beyond the precincts of the city. Their own danger, and the profpect of public diftrefs, awakened fome remorfe in the minds of the most vicious of mankind; the confidence of health again revived their paffions and habits; but philosophy must disdain the observation of Procopius, that the lives of fuch men were guarded by the peculiar favour of fortune or providence. He forgot, or perhaps he fecretly recollected, that the plague had touched the perfon of Juftinian himfelf; but the abftemious diet of the emperor may fuggeft, as in the cafe of Socrates, a more rational and honourable cause for his recovery. 92. During his fickness, the public confternation was expreffed in the habits of the second attack; and this repetition is confirmed by Fabius Paullinus (p. 588.). I obferve that on this head phyficians are divided: and the nature and operation of the difeafe may not always be fimilar. 92 It was thus that Socrates had been faved by his temperance in the plague of Athens (Aul. Gellius, Noct. Attic. ii. 1.). Dr. Mead accounts for the peculiar falubrity of religious houses, by the two advantages of feclufion and abstinence (p. 18, 19.). citizens; XLIII. CHAP. citizens; and their idleness and despondence occafioned a general fcarcity in the capital of the Eaft. Extent and du. ration, A. D. 542 594. 94 Contagion is the infeparable fymptom of the plague; which, by mutual refpiration, is tranf fufed from the infected perfons to the lungs and ftomach of those who approach them. While philofophers believe and tremble, it is fingular, that the existence of a real danger fhould have been denied by a people moft prone to vain and imaginary terrors 93. Yet the fellow-citizens of Procopius were fatisfied, by fome short and partial experience, that the infection could not be gained by the closest converfation "*; and this perfuafion might fupport the affiduity of friends or phyficians in the care of the fick, whom inhuman prudence would have condemned to folitude and defpair, But the fatal fecurity, like the predeftination of the Turks, must have aided the progress of the con tagion, and thofe falutary precautions to which Europe is indebted for her fafety, were unknown to the government of Juftinian. No reftraints were imposed on the free and frequent intercourfe of the Roman provinces; from Perfia to France, 93 Mead proves that the plague is contagious from Thucydides, Lucretius, Ariftotle, Galen, and common experience (p. 10-20.); and he refutes (Preface, p. ii-xiii) the contrary opinion of the French phyficians who vifited Marseilles in the year 1720. Yet thefe were the recent and enlightened spectators of a plague which, in a few months, fwept away 50,000 inhabitants (fur la Pefte de Marseille, Paris, 1786) of a city that, in the present hour of profperity and trade, contains no more than 9,000 fouls (Necker, fur les Finances, tom. i. p 231.). 94 The ftrong affertions of Procopius- yap laтPON ITS yap dr-are overthrown by the subsequent experience of Evagrins. the |